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Under the Deodars
The Phantom 'Rickshaw
Wee Willie Winkie

Under the Deodars
The Phantom 'Rickshaw
Wee Willie Winkie

By Rudyard [Kipling

Garden City New York
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

1919

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Copyright, 1895,
By MACMILLAN AND CO.

Copyright, 1899,
By RUDYARD KIPLING

CONTENTS

PR <t*ST2*

PAGE

The Education of Otis Yeere 3

At the Pit's Mouth 30

A Wayside Comedy 38

The Pit that they Digged 53

The Hill of Illusion 58

A Second-rate Woman 70

Only a Subaltern 93

The Phantom 'Rickshaw 111

My Own True Ghost Story . . . . • . . 140

The Track of a Lle 150

The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes . . 154

The Man who would be King 182

Wee Willie Winkie 227

Baa Baa, Black Sheep 240

His Majesty the King 275

The Drums of the Fore and Aft . . . 289

UNDER THE DEODARS
THE PHANTOM 'RICKSHAW
WEE WILLIE WINKIE

THE EDUCATION OF OTIS YEERE

I

■

In the pleasant orchard-closes
'God bless all our gains,' say we;

But 'May God bless all our losses,'
Better suits with our degree.

The Lost Bower.

This is the history of a failure; but the woman who
failed said that it might be an instructive tale to put
into print for the benefit of the younger generation.
The younger generation does not want instruction,
being perfectly willing to instruct if any one will lis-
ten to it. None the less, here begins the story where
every right-minded story should begin, that is to say at
Simla, where all things begin and many come to an evil
end.

The mistake was due to a very clever woman making
a blunder and not retrieving it. Men are licensed to
stumble, but a clever woman's mistake is outside the
regular course of Nature and Providence; sinc e all good
people know that a woman is the only infallible thing
in this world, except Government Paper of the '79
issue, bearing interest at four and a half per cent. Yet,
we have, to remember that six consecutive days of
rehearsing the leading part of The Fallen Angel, at
the New (iaiety Theatre where the plaster is not yet
properly dry, might have brought about an unhinge-

4 UNDER THE DEODARS

ment of spirits which, again, might have led to eccen-
tricities.

Mrs. Hauksbee came to 'The Foundry' to tiffin with
Mrs. Mallowe, her one bosom friend, for she was in no
sense 'a woman's woman.' And it was a woman's tiffin,
the door shut to all the world; and they both talked
chiffons, which is French for Mysteries.

'I've enjoyed an interval of sanity,' Mrs. Hauksbee
announced, after tiffin was over and the two were com-
fortably settled in the little writing-room that opened
out of Mrs. Mallowe's bedroom.

'My dear girl, what has he done?' said Mrs. Mallowe
sweetly. It is noticeable that ladies of a certain age
call each other 'dear girl,' just as commissioners of
twenty-eight years' standing address their equals in the
Civil List as 'my boy.'

'There's no he in the case. Who am I that an imag-
inary man should be always credited to me? Am I an
Apache? '

'No, dear, but somebody's scalp is generally drying
at your wigwam-door. Soaking, rather.'

This was an allusion to the Hawley Boy, who was in
the habit of riding all across Simla in the Rains, to call
on Mrs. Hauksbee. That lady laughed.

'For my sins, the Aide at Tyrconnel last night told
me off to The Mussuck. Hsh! Don't laugh. One of
my most devoted admirers. When the duff came —
some one really ought to teach them to make puddings at
Tyrconnel — The Mussuck was at liberty to attend to me.'

'Sweet soul! I know his appetite,' said Mrs. Mal-
lowe. ' Did he, oh did he, begin his wooing? '

'By a special mercy of Providence, no. He explained
his importance as a Pillar of the Empire. I didn't
laugh.'

THE EDUCATION OF OTIS YEERE $
'Lucy, I don't believe you.'

'Ask Captain Sangar; he was on the other side.
Well, as I was saying, The Mussuck dilated.'

'I think I can see him doing it,' said Mrs. Mallowe
pensively, scratching her fox-terrier's ears.

' I was properly impressed. Most properly. I yawned
openly. " Strict supervision, and play them off one
against the other," said The Mussuck, shovelling down
his ice by tureenfuls, I assure you. u That, Mrs. Hauks-
bee, is the secret of our Government.'"

Mrs. Mallowe laughed long and merrily. 'And
what did you say? '

'Did you ever know me at loss for an answer yet?
I said: "So I have observed in my dealings with you."
The Mussuck swelled with pride. He is coming to
call on me to-morrow. The Hawley Boy is coming
too.'

'"Strict supervision and play them off one against
the other. That, Mrs. Hauksbee, is the secret of our
Government." And I daresay if we could get to The
Mussuck's heart, we should find that he considers him-
self a man of the world.'

'As he is of the other two things. I like The Mus-
suck, and I won't have you call him names. He amuses
me.'

'He has reformed you, too, by what appears. Ex-
plain the interval of sanity, and hit Tim on the nose with
the paper-cutter, please. That dog is too fond of
sugar. Do you take milk in yours?'

'No, thanks. Polly, I'm wearied of this life. It's
hollow.5

?'Turfi religious, then. I always said that Rome
would fife your fate.'

'Only exchanging half a dozen attaches in red for

6

UNDER THE DEODARS

one in black, and if I fasted, the wrinkles would come%
and never, never go. Has it ever struck you, dear,
that I'm getting old? '

'Thanks for your courtesy. I'll return it. Ye-es,
we are both not exactly — how shall I put it? '

'What we have been. "I feel it in my bones," as
Mrs. Crossley says. Polly, I've wasted my life.'

'As how?'

'Never mind how. I feel it. I want to be a Power
before I die.'

'Be a Power then. You've wits enough for anyv
thing — and beauty?'

Mrs. Hauksbee pointed a teaspoon straight at he)
hostess. 'Polly, if you heap compliments on me like
this, I shall cease to believe that you're a woman. Tel"
me how I am to be a Power.'

' Inform The Mussuck that he is the most fascinating
and slimmest man in Asia, and he'll tell you anything
and everything you please.'

'Bother The Mussuck! I mean an intellectual Power
— not a gas-power. Polly, I'm going to start a
salon?

Mrs. Mallowe turned lazily on the sofa and rested her
head on her hand. 'Hear the words of the Preacher, the
son of Baruch,' she said.

'Will you talk sensibly?'

'I will, dear, for I see that you are going to make a
mistake.'

'I never made a mistake in my life — at least, nevei
one that I couldn't explain afterwards.'

'Going to make a mistake,' went on Mrs. Mallowe
composedly. 'It is impossible to start a salon in Simla
A bar would be much more to the point.'

'Perhaps, but why? It seems so easy.'

THE EDUCATION OF OTIS YEERE

'Just what makes it so difficult. How many clever
women are there in Simla? '

'Myself and yourself,' said Mrs. Hauksbee, without a
moment's hesitation.

'Modest woman! Mrs. Feardon would thank you
for that. And how many clever men? '

'Oh — er — hundreds,' said Mrs. Hauksbee vaguely.

'What a fatal blunder! Not one. They are all
bespoke by the Government. Take my husband, for
instance. Jack was a. clever man, though I say so who
shouldn't. Government has eaten him up. All his
ideas and powers of conversation— he really used to be
a good talker, even to his wife, in the old days — are
taken from him by this — this kitchen-sink of a Gov-
ernment. That's the case with every man up here who
is at work. I don't suppose a Russian convict under
the knout is able to amuse the rest of his gang; and
All our men-folk here are gilded convicts.'

'But there are scores '

'I know what you're going to say. Scores of idle
men up on leave. I admit it, but they arc all of two
objectionable sets. The Civilian who'd be delightful
if he had the military man's knowledge of the world
and style, and the military man who'd be adorable if
he had the Civilian's culture.'

'Detestable word! Have Civilians culchaw? I never
studied the breed deeply.'

'Don't make fun of Jack's service. Yes. They're
like the teapoys in the Lakka Razar good material
but not polished. They can't help themselves, poor
dears. A Civilian only begins to be tolerable after he
has knocked about the world for fifteen years.'

'And a military man?'

'When he has had the same amount of service. The

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UNDER THE DEODARS

young of both species are horrible. You would have
scores of them in your salon.1

'I would not!1 said Mrs. Hauksbee fiercely. 'I
would tell the bearer to darwaza band them. I'd put
their own colonels and commissioners at the door to
turn them away. I'd give them to the Topsham girl
to play with.'

'The Topsham girl would be grateful for the gift.
But to go back to the salon. Allowing that you had
gathered all your men and women together, what would
you do with them? Make them talk? They would all
with one accord begin to flirt. Your salon would become
a glorified Peliti's — a " Scandal Point" by lamplight.'

'There's a certain amount of wisdom in that view.'

'There's all the wisdom in the world in it. Surely,
twelve Simla seasons ought to have taught you that
you can't focus anything in India; and a salon, to be
any good at all, must be permanent. In two seasons
your roomful would be scattered all over Asia. We
are only little bits of dirt on the hillsides^here one
day and blown down the khud the next. We have lost
the art of talking — at least our men have. We have no
cohesion '

'George Eliot in the flesh,' interpolated Mrs. Hauks-
bee wickedly.

'And collectively, my dear scoffer, we, men and
women alike, have no influence. Come into the veranda
and look at the Mall ! '

The two looked down on the now rapidly filling road,
for all Simla was abroad to steal a stroll between a
shower and a fog.

'How do you propose to fix that river? Look!
There's The Mussuck — head of goodness knows what.
He is a power in the land, though he does eat like a

THE EDUCATION OF OTIS YEERE

9

costermonger. There's Colonel Blone, and General
Grucher, and Sir Dugald Delane, and Sir Henry Haugh-
ton, and Mr. Jellalatty. All Heads of Departments,
and all powerful.'

'And all my fervent admirers,' said Mrs. Hauksbee
piously. 'Sir Henry Haughton raves about me. But
go on.'

'One by one, these men are worth something. Col-
lectively, they're just a mob of Anglo-Indians. Who
cares for what Anglo-Indians say? Your salon won't
weld the Departments together and make you mistress
of India, dear. And these creatures won't talk admin-
istrative "shop" in a crowd — your salon — because
they are so afraid of the men in the lower ranks over-
hearing it. They have forgotten what of Literature
and Art they ever knew, and the women '

'Can't talk about anything except the last Gym-
khana, or the sins of their last nurse. I was calling on
Mrs. Derwills this morning.'

'You admit that? They can talk to the subalterns
though, and the subalterns can talk to them. Your
salon would suit their views admirably, if you respected
the religious prejudices of the country and provided
plenty of kala juggahs .'

'Plenty of kala juggahs. Oh my poor little idea!
Kala juggahs in a salon! But who made you so awfully
clever? '

'Perhaps I've tried myself; or perhaps I know a
woman who has. I have preached and expounded the
whole matter and the conclusion thereof '

'You needn't go on. "Is Vanity." Polly, I thank
you. THese vermin' — Mrs. Hauksbee waved her hand
from the" veranda to two men in the crowd below who
had raised their hats to her — 'these vermin shall not

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UNDER THE DEODARS

rejoice in a new Scandal Point or an extra Peliti's. I
will abandon the notion of a salon. It did seem so
tempting, though. But what shall I do? I must do
something.'

' Why? Are not Abana and Pharphar '

'Jack has made you nearly as bad as himself! I
want to, of course. I'm tired of everything and every-
body, from a moonlight picnic at Seepee to the blan-
dishments of The Mussuck.'

'Yes — that comes, too, sooner or later. Have you
nerve enough to make your bow yet? '

Mrs. Hauksbee's mouth shut grimly. Then she
laughed. 'I think I see myself doing it. Big pink
placards on the Mall: "Mrs. Hauksbee! Positively
her last appearance on any stage! This is to give
notice!" No more dances; no more rides; no more
luncheons; no more theatricals with supper to follow;
no more sparring with one's dearest, dearest friend; no
more fencing with an inconvenient man who hasn't wit
enough to clothe what he's pleased to call his senti-
ments in passable speech; no more parading of The
Mussuck while Mrs. Tarkass calls all round Simla,
spreading horrible stories about me! No more of any-
thing that is thoroughly wearying, abominable and
detestable, but, all the same, makes life worth the
having. Yes! I see it all! Don't interrupt, Polly.
I'm inspired. A mauve and white striped "cloud"
round my excellent shoulders, a seat in the fifth row
of the Gaiety, and both horses sold. Delightful vision!
A comfortable arm-chair, situated in three different
draughts, at every ballroom, and nice, large, sensible
shoes for all the couples to stumble over as they go
into the veranda! Then at supper. Can't you imag-
ine the scene? The greedy mob gone away. Reluc-

THE EDUCATION OF OTIS YEERE

1 1

tant subaltern, pink all over like a newly-powdered
baby, — they really ought to tan subalterns before they
are exported, Polly — sent back by the hostess to do
his duty. Slouches up to me across the room, tugging
at a glove two sizes too large for him — I hate a man
who wears gloves like overcoats — and trying to look
as if he'd thought of it from the first. "May I ah-have
the pleasure 'f takin' you 'nt' supper?" Then I get
up with a hungry smile. Just like this.'

'Lucy, how can you be so absurd?'

'And sweep out on his arm. So! After supper I
shall go away early, you know, because I shall be afraid
of catching cold. No one will look for my WickshawK
Mine, so please you! I shall stand, always with that
mauve and white "cloud" over my head, while the
wet soaks into my dear, old, venerable feet and Tom
swears and shouts for the memsahW s gharri. Then
home to bed at half -past eleven! Truly excellent life
— helped out by the visits of the Padri, just fresh from
burying somebody down below there.' She pointed
through the pines, towards the Cemetery, and con-
tinued with vigorous dramatic gesture —

'Listen! I see it all — down, down even to the stays!
Such stays! Six-eight a pair, Polly, with red flannel
— or list is it? — that they put into the tops of those fear-
ful things. I can draw you a picture of them.'

'Lucy, for Heaven's sake, don't go waving your arms
about in that idiotic manner! Recollect, every one can
see you from the Mall.'

'Let them see! They'll think I am rehearsing for
The Fallen ^Angel. Look! There's The Mussuck. How
badfy he rides. There!'

She blew a kiss to the venerable Indian administrator
with infinite graces

12

UNDER THE DEODARS

'Now/ she continued, 'he'll be chaffed about that
at the Club in the delicate manner those brutes of men
affect, and the Hawley Boy will tell me all about it
— softening the details for fear of shocking me. That
boy is too good to live, Polly. I've serious thoughts
of recommending him to throw up his Commission and
go into the Church. In his present frame of mind he
would obey me. Happy, happy child ! '

'Never again,' said Mrs. Mallowe, with an affecta-
tion of indignation, 'shall you tiffin here! "Lucindy,
your behaviour is scand'lus. "'

'All your fault,' retorted Mrs. Hauksbee, 'for sug-
gesting such a thing as my abdication. No! Jamais-
nevaire! I will act, dance, ride, frivol, talk scandal,
dine out, and appropriate the legitimate captives of
any woman I choose, until I d-r-r-rop, or a better wo-
man than I puts me to shame before all Simla, — and
it's dust and ashes in my mouth while I'm doing it!'

•She swept into the drawing-room. Mrs. Mallowe
followed and put an arm round her waist.

'I'm not/' said Mrs. Hauksbee defiantly, rummag-
ing for her handkerchief. 'I've been dining out the
last ten nights, and rehearsing in the afternoon. You'd
be tired yourself. It's only because I'm tired.'

Mrs. Mallowe did not offer Mrs. Hauksbee any pity
or ask her to lie down, but gave her another cup of
tea, and went on with the talk.

'I've been through that too, dear,' she said.

'I remember,' said Mrs. Hauksbee, a gleam of fun
on her face. 'In '84, wasn't it? You went out a great
deal less next season.-'

Mrs. Mallowe smiled in a superior and Sphinx-like
fashion.

'I became an Influence/ said she.

THE EDUCATION OF OTIS YEERE

13

'Good gracious, child, you didn't join the Theoso-
phists and kiss Buddha's big toe, did you? I tried to
get into their set once, but they cast me out for a sceptic
— without a chance of improving my poor little mind,
too.'

'No, I didn't Theosophilander. Jack says '

'Never mind Jack. What a husband says is known
before. What did you do? '
'I made a lasting impression.'

'So have I — for four months. But that didn't con-
sole me in the least. I hated the man. Will you stop
smiling in that inscrutable way and tell me what you
mean? '

Mrs. Mallowe told.

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'And — you — mean — to — say that it is absolutely Pla-
tonic on both sides? '

'Absolutely, or I should never have taken it up.'
'And his last promotion was due to you?'
Mrs. Mallowe nodded.

'And you warned him against the Topsham girl?'
Another nod.

'And told him of Sir Dugald Delane's private memo
about him?'
A third nod.
'Why?'

'What a question to ask a woman! Because it
amused me at first. I am proud of my property now.
If I live^he shall continue to be successful. Yes, I
will put him upon the straight road to Knighthood,
and everything else that a man values. The rest de-
pends upon himself.'

'Polly, you arc a most extraordinary woman.'

14

UNDER THE DEODARS

'Not in the least. I'm concentrated, that's all.
You diffuse yourself, dear; and though all Simla know?
your skill in managing a team '

'Can't you choose a prettier word?'

'Teatn, of half a dozen, from The Mussuck to the
Hawley Boy, you gain nothing by it. Not even amuse-
ment.'

'And you?'

'Try my recipe. Take a man, not a boy, mind, but
an almost mature, unattached man, and be his guide,
philosopher, and friend. You'll find it the most in-
teresting occupation that you ever embarked on. It
can be done — you needn't look like that — because I've
done it.'

'There's an element of risk about it that makes the
notion attractive. I'll get such a man and say to him,
"Now, understand that there must be no flirtation. Do
exactly what I tell you, profit by my instruction and
counsels, and all will yet be well." Is that the idea?'

'More or less,' said Mrs. Mallowe, with an unfathom-
able smile. ' But be sure he understands.'

II

Dribble-dribble — trickle-trickle —

What a lot of raw dust!
My dollie's had an accident

And out came all the sawdust!

Nursery Rhyme.

So Mrs. Hauksbee, in 1 The Foundry' which overlooks
Simla Mall, sat at the feet of Mrs. Mallowe and
gathered wisdom. The end of the Conference was the
Great Idea upon which Mrs. Hauksbee so plumed her-
self.

'I warn you,' said Mrs. Mallowe, beginning to repent
of her suggestion, 'that the matter is not half so easy
as it looks. Any woman — even the Topsham girl — can
catch a man, but very, very few know how to manage
him when caught.'

'My child,' was the answer, 'I've been a female St.
Simon Stylites looking down upon men for these —
these years past. Ask The Mussuck whether I can man-
age them.'

Mrs. Hauksbee departed humming, tVU go to him ami
say to him in manner most ironical? Mrs. Mallowe
laughed to herself. Then she grew suddenly sober. 41
wonder whether I've done well in advising that amuse-
ment? Lucy's a clever woman, but a thought too care-
less.*

A week later, the two met at a Monday Pop. 'Well?'
said Mrs. Mallowe.

is

i6

UNDER THE DEODARS

'I've caught him!' said Mrs. Hauksbee; her eyes were
dancing with merriment.

' Who is it, mad woman? I'm sorry I ever spoke to
you about it.'

'Look between the pillars. In the third row; fourth
from the end. You can see his face now. Look!'

'Otis Yeere! Of all the improbable and impossible
people! I don't believe you.'

'Hsh! Wait till Mrs. Tarkass begins murdering
Milton Wellings; and I'll tell you all about it. S-s-ss I
That woman's voice always reminds me of an Under-
ground train coming into Earl's Court with the brakes
on. Now listen. It is really Otis Yeere.'

*So I see, but does it follow that he is your property?'

'He is! By right of trove. I found him, lonely
and unbefriended, the very next night after our talk,
at the Dugald Delane's burra-khana. I liked his eyes,
and I talked to him. Next day he called. Next day
we went for a ride together, and to-day he's tied to
my 'rickshaw-wheels hand and foot. You'll see when
the concert's over. He doesn't know I'm here yet.'

'Thank goodness you haven't chosen a boy. What
are you going to do with him, assuming that you've
got him?'

'Assuming, indeed! Does a woman — do / — ever
make a mistake in that sort of thing? First' — Mrs.
Hauksbee ticked off the items ostentatiously on her
little gloved fingers — 'First, my dear, I shall dress
him properly. At present his raiment is a disgrace,
and he wears a dress-shirt like a crumpled sheet of the
Pioneer, Secondly, after I have made him presentable,
I shall form his manners — his morals are above reproach.'

'You seem to have discovered a great deal about him
considering the shortness of your acquaintance.'

THE EDUCATION OF OTIS YEERE

17

'Surely yon ought to know that the first proof a
man gives of his interest in a woman is by talking to
her about his own sweet self. If the woman listens
without yawning, he begins to like her. If she flatters
the animal's vanity, he ends by adoring her.'

'In some cases.'

'Never mind the exceptions. I know Which one
you are thinking of. Thirdly, and lastly, after he is
polished and made pretty, I shall, as you said, be his
guide, philosopher, and friend, and he shall become a
success — as great a success as your friend. I always
wondered how that man got on. Did The Mussuck
come to you with the Civil List and, dropping on one
knee — no, two knees, d la Gibbon — hand it to you and
say, "Adorable angel, choose your friend's appoint-
ment"?'

'Lucy, your long experiences of the Military Depart-
ment have demoralised you. One doesn't do that sort
of thing on the Civil Side.'

'No disrespect meant to Jack's Service, my dear.
I only asked for information. Give me three months,
and see what changes I shall work in my prey.'

'Go your own way since you must. But I'm sorry
that I was weak enough to suggest the amusement.'

"'I am all discretion, and may be trusted to an in-
fin-ite extent,'" quoted Mrs. Hauksbec from The Fallen
Angel; and the conversation ceased with Mrs. Tar-
kass's last, long-drawn war-whoop.

Her bitterest enemies — and she had many— could
hardly accuse Mrs. Hauksbec of wasting her time.
Otfs Yeefe was one of those wandering 'dumb' charac-
ters, foredoomed through life to be nobody's property.
Ten years in Her Majesty's Bengal Civil Service, spent,
'or the most part, in undesirable Districts, had given

i8

UNDER THE DEODARS

him little to be proud of, and nothing to bring confi-
dence. Old enough to have lost the first fine careless
rapture that showers on the immature 'Stunt imaginary
Commissionerships and Stars, and sends him into the
collar with coltish earnestness and abandon; too young
to be yet able to look back upon the progress he had
made, and thank Providence that under the conditions
of the day he had come even so far, he stood upon the
dead-centre of his career. And when a man stands
still, he feels the slightest impulse from without. For-
* tune had ruled that Otis Yeere should be, for the first
part of his service, one of the rank and file who are
ground up in the wheels of the Administration; losing
heart and soul, and mind and strength, in the process.
Until steam replaces manual power in the working of the
Empire, there must always be this percentage — must
always be the men who are used up, expended, in the
mere mechanical routine. For these promotion is far
off and the mill-grind of every day very instant. The
Secretariats know them only by name; they are not the
picked men of the Districts with Divisions and Collec
torates awaiting them. They are simply the rank and
file — the food for fever — sharing with the ryot and the
plough-bullock the honour of being the plinth on which
the State rests. The older ones have lost their aspi-
rations; the younger are putting theirs aside with a sigh.
Both learn to endure patiently until the end of the day.
Twelve years in the rank and file, men say,' will sap the
hearts of the bravest and dull the wits of the most keen.

Out of this life Otis Yeere had fled for a few months;
drifting, in the hope of a little masculine society, into
Simla. When his leave was over he would return to
his swampy, sour-green, under-manned Bengal district;
to the native Assistant, the native Doctor, the native

THE EDUCATION OF OTIS YEERE

19

Magistrate, the steaming, sweltering Station, the ill-
kempt City, and the undisguised insolence of the Mu-
nicipality that babbled away the lives of men. Life
was cheap, however. The soil spawned humanity, as
it bred frogs in the Rains, and the gap of the sickness
of one season was filled to overflowing by the fecundity
of the next. Otis was unfeignedly thankful to lay
down his work for a little while and escape from the
seething, whining, weakly hive, impotent to help itself,
but strong in its power to cripple, thwart, and annoy
the sunken-eyed man who, by official irony, was said
to be 'in charge' of it.

# $ ^ * # $ * $ *

' I knew there were women-dowdies in Bengal. They
come up here sometimes. But I didn't know that there
were men-dowds, too.'

Then, for the first time, it occurred to Otis Yeere
that his clothes wore the mark of the ages. It will be
seen that his friendship with Mrs. Hauksbee had made
great strides.

As that lady truthfully says, a man is never so happy
as when he is talking about himself. From Otis Yeere's
lips Mrs. Hauksbee, before long, learned everything
that she wished to know about the subject of her ex-
periment: learned what manner of life he had led iii
what she vaguely called 'those awful cholera districts';
learned, too, but this knowledge came later, what man-
ner of life he had purposed to lead and what dreams he
had dre*amed in the year of grace '77, before the reality
ha*d kno'eked the heart out of him. Very pleasant are
the shady bridle-paths round Prospect Hill for the tell-
ing of such confidences.

'Not yet, '.said Mrs. Hauksbee to Mrs. Mallowe.

20

UNDER THE DEODARS

' Not yet. I must wait until the man is properly dressed,
at least. Great Heavens, is it possible that he doesn't
know what an honour it is to be taken up by Me ! '

Mrs. Hauksbee did not reckon false modesty as one of
her failings.

'Always with Mrs. Hauksbee!' murmured Mrs. Mal-
iowe, with her sweetest smile, to Otis. 'Oh you men,
you men! Here are our Punjabis growling because
you've monopolised, the nicest woman in Simla. They'll
tear you to pieces on the Mall, some day, Mr. Yeere.'

Mrs. Mallowe rattled down-hill, having satisfied her-
self, by a glance through the fringe of her sunshade, of
the effect of her words.

The shot went home. Of a surety Otis Yeere was
somebody in this bewildering whirl of Simla — had
monopolised the nicest woman in it and the Punjabis
were growling. The notion justified a mild glow of
vanity. He had never looked upon his acquaintance
with Mrs. Hauksbee as a matter for general interest.

The knowledge of envy was a pleasant feeling to the
man of no account. It was intensified later in the day
when a luncher at the Club said spitefully, 'Well, for a
debilitated Ditcher, Yeere, you are going it. Hasn't
any kind friend told you that she's the most dangerous
woman in Simla?'

Yeere chuckled and passed out. When, oh when,
would his new clothes be ready? He descended into
the Mall to inquire; and Mrs. Hauksbee, coming over
the Church Ridge in her 'rickshaw, looked down upon
him approvingly. 'He's learning to carry himself as
if he were a man, instead of a piece of furniture, — and,'
she screwed up her eyes to see the better through the
sunlight — 'he is a man when he holds himself like that.
Oh blessed Conceit, what should we be without you?'

THE EDUCATION OF OTIS YEERE 21

With the new clothes came a new stock of self-confi-
dence. Otis Yeere discovered that he could enter a
room without breaking into a gentle perspiration —
could cross one, even to talk to Mrs. Hauksbee, as
though rooms were meant to be crossed. He was for
the first time in nine years proud of himself, and con-
tented with his life, satisfied with his new clothes, and
rejoicing in the friendship of Mrs. Hauksbee.

'Conceit is what the poor fellow wants,' she said in
confidence to Mrs. Mallowe. 'I believe they must use
Civilians to plough the fields with in Lower Bengal.
You see I have to begin from the very beginning —
haven't I? But you'll admit, won't you, dear, that he
is immensely improved since I took him in hand. Only
give me a little more time and he won't know himself.'

Indeed, Yeere was rapidly beginning to forget what
he had been. One of his own rank and file put the
matter brutally when he asked Yeere, in reference to
nothing, 'And who has been making you a Member of
Council, lately? You carry the side of half a dozen
of 'em.'

'I — I'm awf'ly sorry. I didn't mean it, you know,'
said Yeere apologetically.

'There'll be no holding you,' continued the old stager
grimly. 'Climb down, Otis— climb down, and get all
that beastly affectation knocked out of you with fever!
Three thousand a month wouldn't support it.'

Yeere repeated the incident to Mrs. Hauksbee. He
had come to look upon her as his Mother Confessor.

'And .you apologised!' she said. 'Oh, shame! I
hale a man who apologises. Never apologise for what
your friend called "side." Never! It's a man's busi-
ness to be insolent and overbearing until he meets with
a stronger. Nov/, you bad boy, listen to me.

22

UNDER THE DEODARS

Simply and straightforwardly, as the 'rickshaw loitered
round Jakko, Mrs. Hauksbee preached to Otis Yeere
the Great Gospel of Conceit, illustrating it with living
pictures encountered during their Sunday afternoon
stroll.

'Good gracious !' she ended with the personal argu-
ment, ' you'll apologise next for being my attache?1

' Never ! ' said Otis Yeere. ' That's another thing alto-
gether. I shall always be 7

'What's coming?' thought Mrs. Hauksbee.

'Proud of that,' said Otis.

' Safe for the present,' she said to herself.

' But I'm afraid I have grown conceited. Like Jeshu-
run, you know. When he waxed fat, then he kicked.
It's the having no worry on one's mind and the Hill
air, I suppose.'

'Hill air, indeed!' said Mrs. Hauksbee to herself.
'He'd have been hiding in the Club till the last day of
his leave, if I hadn't discovered him.' And aloud —

'Why shouldn't you be? You have every right to.'

'I! Why?'

'Oh, hundreds of things. I'm not going to waste
this lovely afternoon by explaining; but I know you
have. What was that heap of manuscript you showed
me about the grammar of the aboriginal — what's their
names? '

'Gullals. A piece of nonsense. I've far too much
work to do to bother over Gullals now. You should
see my District. Come down with your husband some
day and I'll show you round. Such a lovely place in
the Rains 1 A sheet of water with the railway-embank-
ment and the snakes sticking out, and, in the summer,
green flies and green squash. The people would die of
fear if you shook a dogwhip at 'em. But they know

THE EDUCATION OF OTIS YEERE

23

you're forbidden to do that, so they conspire to make
your life a burden to you. My District's worked by
some man at Darjiling, on the strength of a native
pleader's false reports. Oh, it's a heavenly place!'
Otis Yeere laughed bitterly.

'There's not the least necessity that you should stay
in it. Why do you?'

'Because I must. How'm I to get out of it?'

'How! In a hundred and fifty ways. If there weren't
so many people on the road, I'd like to box your ears.
Ask, my dear boy, ask ! Look ! There is young Hexarly
with six years' service and half your talents. He asked
for what he wanted, and he got it. See, down by the
Convent! There's McArthurson who has come to his
present position by asking — sheer, downright asking —
after he had pushed himself out of the rank and file. One
man is as good as another in your service — believe me.
I've seen Simla for more seasons than I care to think
about. Do you suppose men are chosen for appointments
because of their special fitness beforehand ? You have all
passed a high test — what do you call it? — in the beginning,
and, except for the few who have gone altogether to the
bad, you can all work hard. Asking does the rest. Call
it cheek, call it insolence, call it anything you like, but
ask! Men argue — yes, I know what men say— that a
man, by the mere audacity of his request, must have some
good in him. A weak man doesn't say: "Give me this
and that." He whines: "Why haven't I been given this
and that?" If you were in the Army, I should say learn
to spin plates or play a tambourine with your toes. As it
is—task! *Vou belong to a Service that ought to be able •
to command the Channel Fleet, or set a leg at twenty
minutes' notice, and yet you hesitate over asking to
escape from a squashy green district where you admit you

84

UNDER THE DEODARS

are not master. Drop the Bengal Government alto-
gether. Even Darjiling is a little out-of-the-way hole. £
was there once, and the rents were extortionate. Assert
yourself. Get the Government of India to take you over.
Try to get on the Frontier, where every man has a grand
chance if he can trust himself. Go somewhere ! Do some-
thing! You have twice the wits and three times the
presence of the men up here, and, and' — Mrs. Hauksbee
paused for breath; then continued — 'and in any way you
look at it, you ought to. You who could go so far ! '

'I don't know,' said Yeere, rather taken aback by the
unexpected eloquence. ' I haven't such a good opinion of
myself.'

It was not strictly Platonic, but it was Policy. Mrs.
Hauksbee laid her hand lightly upon the ungloved paw
that rested on the turned-backed 'rickshaw hood, and,
looking the man full in the face, said tenderly, almost too
tenderly, '/ believe in you if you mistrust yourself. Is
that enough, my. friend? '

'It is enough,' answered Otis very solemnly.

He was silent for a long time, redreaming the dreams
that he had dreamed eight years ago, but through them
all ran, as sheet-lightning through golden cloud, the light
of Mrs. Hauksbee's violet eyes.

Curious and impenetrable are the mazes of Simla life —
the only existence in this desolate land worth the living.
Gradually it went abroad among men and women, in the
pauses between dance, play, and Gymkhana, that Otis
Yeere, the man with the newly-lit light of self-confidence
in his eyes, had 'done something decent' in the wilds
whence he came. He had brought an erring Municipal-
ity to reason, appropriated the funds on his own responsi-
bility, and saved the lives of hundreds. He knew more
about the Gullals than any living man. Had a vast

THE EDUCATION OF OTIS YEERE

25

knowledge of the aboriginal tribes; was, in spite of his
juniority, the greatest authority on the aboriginal Gullals.
No one quite knew who or what the Gullals were till The
Mussuck, who had been calling on Mrs. Hauksbee, and
prided himself upon picking people's brains, explained
they were a tribe of ferocious hillmen, somewhere near
Sikkim, whose friendship even the Great Indian Empire
would find it worth her while to secure. Now we know
that Otis Yeere had showed Mrs. Hauksbee his MS.
notes of six years' standing on these same Gullals. He had
told her, too, how, sick and shaken with the fever their
negligence had bred, crippled by the loss of his pet clerk,
and savagely angry at the desolation in his charge, he had
once damned the collective eyes of his 'intelligent local
board' for a set of haramzadas. Which act of ' brutal and
tyrannous oppression ' won him a Reprimand Royal from
the Bengal Government; but in the anecdote as amended
for Northern consumption we find no record of this.
Hence we are forced to conclude that Mrs. Hauksbee
edited his reminiscences before sowing them in idle ears,
ready, as she well knew, to exaggerate good or evil. And
Otis Yeere bore himself as befitted the hero of many tales.

'You can talk to me when you don't fall into a brown
study. Talk now, and talk your brightest and best,' said
Mrs. Hauksbee.

Otis needed no spur. Look to a man who has the
counsel of a woman of or above the world to back him.
So long as he keeps his head, he can meet both sexes on
equal ground — an advantage never intended by Provi-
dence, who fashioned Man on one day and Woman on an-
other, in sign that neither should know more than a very
little of the other's life. Such a man goes far, or, the
counsel being withdrawn, collapses suddenly while his
world seeks the reason.

26

UNDER THE DEODARS

Generalled by Mrs. Hauksbee, who, again, had all Mrs.
Mallowe's wisdom at her disposal, proud of himself and,
in the end, believing in himself because he was believed
in, Otis Yeere stood ready for any fortune that might be-
fall, certain that it would be good. He would fight for
his own hand, and intended that this second struggle
should lean to better issue than the first helpless surrendei
of the bewildered 'Stunt.

What might have happened, it is impossible to say
This lamentable thing befell, bred directly by a state
ment of Mrs. Hauksbee that she would spend the ne?t
season in Darjiling.

'Are you certain of that? ' said Otis Yeere.

' Quite. We're writing about a house now.'

Otis Yeere ' stopped dead,' as Mrs. Hauksbee put it in
discussing the relapse with Mrs. Mallowe.

'He has behaved,' she said angrily, 'just like Captain
Kerrington's pony — only Otis is a donkey — at the last
Gymkhana. Planted his forefeet and refused to go on
another step. Polly, my man's going to disappoint me.
What shall I do?'

As a rule, Mrs. Mallowe does not approve of staring,
but on this occasion she opened her eyes to the utmost.

'You have managed cleverly so far,' she said. 'Speak
to him, and ask him what he means.'

' I will — at to-night's dance.'

'No — o, not at a dance,' said Mrs. Mallowe cautiously.
' Men are never themselves quite at dances. Better wait
till to-morrow morning.'

'Nonsense. If he's going to 'vert in this insane way,
there isn't a day to lose. Are you going? No? Then
sit up for me, there's a dear. I shan't stay longer than
supper under any circumstances.'

Mrs. Mallowe waited through the evening, looking long

THE EDUCATION OF OTIS YEERE

27

and earnestly into the fire, and sometimes smiling to
herself.

'Oh! oh! oh! The man's an idiot! A raving, positive
idiot ! I'm sorry I ever saw him ! '

Mrs. Hauksbee burst into Mrs. Mallowe's house, at
midnight, almost in tears.

'What in the world has happened? ' said Mrs. Mallowe,
but her eyes showed that she had guessed an answer.

'Happened! Everything has happened! He was
there. I went to him and said, "Now, what does this
nonsense mean?" Don't laugh, dear, I can't bear it.
But you know what I mean I said. Then it was a square,
and I sat it out with him and wanted an explanation, and
he said — Oh! I haven't patience with such idiots! You
know what I said about going to Darjiling next year? It
doesn't matter to me where I go. I'd have changed the
Station and lost the rent to have saved this. He said, in
so many words, that he wasn't going to try to work up
any more, because — because he would be shifted into a
province away from Darjiling, and his own District,
where these creatures are, is within a day's journey '

'Ah — hh!' said Mrs. Mallowe, in a tone of one who has
successfully tracked an obscure word through a large dic-
tionary.

'Did you ever hear of anything so mad — so absurd?
And he had the ball at his feet. He had only to kick it !
I would have made him anything ! Anything in the wide
world. He could have gone to the world's end. I would
have helped him. I made him, didn't 1, Polly? Didn't 1
create that man? Doesn't he owe everything to me?
And to reward me, just when everything was nicely
arranged, by this lunacy that spoilt everything!'

UNDER THE DEODARS

'Very few men understand your devotion thoroughly.*
' Oh, Polly, don't laugh at me ! I give men up from this
hour. I could have killed him then and there. What
right had this man — this Thing I had picked out of his
filthy paddy-fields — to make love to me? '
'He did that, did he?'

'He did. I don't remember half he said, I was so
angry. Oh, but such a funny thing happened! I can't
help laughing at it now, though I felt nearly ready to cry
with rage. He raved and I stormed — I'm afraid we must
have made an awful noise in our kala jnggah. Protect my
character, dear, if it's all over Simla by to-morrow — and
then he bobbed forward in the middle of this insanity — I
firmly believe the man's demented — and kissed me ! '

'Morals above reproach,' purred Mrs. Mallowe.

' So they were — so they are ! It was the most absurd
kiss. I don't believe he'd ever kissed a woman in his life
before. I threw my head back, and it was a sort of slidy
pecking dab, just on the end of the chin — here.' Mrs.
Hauksbee tapped her masculine little chin with her fan.
'Then, of course, I was furiously angry, and told him that
he was no gentleman, and I was sorry I'd ever met him,
and so on. He was crushed so easily that I couldn't be
very angry. Then I came away straight to you.'

'Was this before or after supper? '

'Oh! before — oceans before. Isn't it perfectly dis-
gusting? '

'Let me think. I withold judgment till to-morrow.
Morning brings counsel.'

But morning brought only a servant with a dainty
bouquet of Annandale roses for Mrs. Hauksbee to wear at
the dance at Viceregal Lodge that night.

'He doesn't seem to be very penitent,' said Mrs,
Mallowe. ' What's the billet-doux in the centre? '

THE EDUCATION OF OTIS YEERE

29

Mrs. Hauksbee opened the neatly-folded note, — an-
other accomplishment that she had taught Otis, — read it,
and groaned tragically.

' Last wreck of a feeble intellect ! Poetry ! Is it his own,
do you think? Oh, that I ever built my hopes on such a
maudlin idiot ! '

'No. It's a quotation from Mrs. Browning, and, in
view of the facts of the case, as Jack says, uncommonly
well chosen. Listen —

Sweet thou hast trod on a heart,

Pass! There's a world full of men;
And women as fair as thou art,

Must do such things now and then.

Thou only hast stepped unaware —

Malice not one can impute;
And why should a heart have been there,

In the way of a fair woman's foot? '

'I didn't— I didn't— I didn't!' said Mrs. Hauksbee
angrily, her eyes filling with tears; ' there was no malice at
all. Oh, it's too vexatious ! '

' You've misunderstood the compliment,' said Mrs.
Mallowe. 'He clears you completely and — 'ahem — I
should think by this, that he has cleared completely too.
My experience of men is that when they begin to quote
poetry, they are going to flit. Like swans singing before
they die, you know.'

'Polly, you take my sorrows in a most unfeeling way/

'Do I? m Is it so terrible? If he's hurt your vanity, I
should say-you've done a certain amount of damage to his
heart.'

'Oh, you never can tell about a man!' said Mrs. Hauks-
bee.

AT THE PIT'S MOUTH

Men say it was a stolen tide —

The Lord that sent it he knows all.
But in mine ear will aye abide

The message that the bells let fall,
And awesome bells they were to me,
That in the dark rang, 'Enderby.'

Jean Ingelow.

Once upon a time there .was a Man and his Wife and
a Tertium Quid.

All three were unwise, but the Wife was the un-
wisest. The Man should have looked after his Wife,
who should have avoided the Tertium Quid, who,
again, should have married a wife of his own, after
clean and open flirtations, to which nobody can possi-
bly object, round Jakko or Observatory Hill. When
you see a young man with his pony in a white lather,
and his hat on the back of his head flying down-hill
at fifteen miles an hour to meet a girl who will be prop-
erly surprised to meet him, you naturally approve of
that young man, and wish him Staff appointments, and
take an interest in his welfare, and, as the proper time
comes, give them sugar-tongs or side-saddles according to
your means and generosity.

The Tertium Quid flew down-hill on horseback, but
it was to meet the Man's Wife; and when he flew up-
hill it was for the same end. The Man was in the
Plains, earning money for his Wife to spend on dresses
and four-hundred-rupee bracelets, and inexpensive lux-

3°

AT THE PIT'S MOUTH

3i

dries of that kind. He worked very hard, and sent
her a letter or a post-card daily. She also wrote to
him daily, and said that she was longing for him to
come up to Simla. The Tertium Quid used to lean
over her shoulder and laugh as she wrote the notes.
Then the two would ride to the Post-office together.

Now, Simla is a strange place and its customs are
peculiar; nor is any man who has not spent at least
ten seasons there qualified to pass judgment on circum-
stantial evidence, which is the most untrustworthy in
the Courts. For these reasons, and for others which
need not appear, I decline to state positively whether
there was anything irretrievably wrong in the rela-
tions between the Man's Wife and the Tertium Quid.
If there was, and hereon you must form your own opin-
ion, it was the Man's Wife's fault. She was kittenish in
her manners, wearing generally an air of soft and fluffy
innocence. But she was deadlily learned and evil-
instructed; and, now and again, when the mask dropped,
men saw this, shuddered and^-almost drew back. Men
are occasionally particular, and the least particular men
are always the most exacting.

Simla is eccentric in its fashion of treating friend-
ships. Certain attachments which have set and crys-
tallised through half a dozen seasons acquire almost
the sanctity of the marriage bond, and are revered as
such. Again, certain attachments equally old, and,
to all appearance, equally venerable, never seem to win
any recognised official status; while a chance-sprung
acquaintance, not two months born, steps into the place
which by fight belongs to the senior. There is no law
reducible to print which regulates these affairs.

Some people have a gift which secures them infinite
toleration, and others have not. The Man's Wife had

3?

UNDER THE DEODARS

not. If she looked over the garden wall, for instance,
women taxed her with stealing their husbands. She
complained pathetically that she was not allowed to choose
her own friends. When she put up her big white muff to
her Hps, and gazed over it and under her eyebrows at
you as she said this thing, you felt that she had been in-
famously misjudged, and that all the other women's in-
stincts were all wrong; which was absurd. She was not
allowed to own the Tertium Quid in peace; and was so
strangely constructed that she would not have enjoyed
peace had she been so permitted. She preferred some
semblance of intrigue to cloak even her most common-
place actions.

After two months of riding, first round Jakko, then
Elysium, then Summer Hill, then Observatory Hill,
then under Jutogh, and lastly up and down the Cart
Road as far as the Tara Devi gap in the dusk, she said
to the Tertium Quid, * Frank, people say we are too much
together, and people are so horrid.'

The Tertium Quid pulled his moustache, and replied
that horrid people were unworthy of the consideration
of nice people.

'But they have done more than talk — they have
written — written to my hubby — I'm sure of it,' said
the Man's Wife, and she pulled a letter from her husband
out of her saddle-pocket and gave it to the Tertium
Quid.

It was an honest letter, written by an honest man,
chen stewing in the Plains on two hundred rupees a
month (for he allowed his wife eight hundred and fifty),
and in a silk banian and cotton trousers. It said
that, perhaps, she had not thought of the unwisdom of
allowing her name to be. so generally coupled with the
Tertium Quid's; that she was too much of a child to

AT THE PIT'S MOUTH

33

understand the dangers of that sort of thing; that he,
her husband, was the last man in the world to interfere
jealously with her little amusements and interests, but
that it would be better were she to drop the Tertium
Quid quietly and for her husband's sake. The letter
was sweetened with many pretty little pet names, and
it amused the Tertium Quid considerably. He and She
laughed over it, so that you, fifty yards away, could see
their shoulders shaking while the horses slouched along
side by side.

Their conversation was not worth reporting. The
upshot- of it was that, next day, no one saw the Man's
Wife and the Tertium Quid together. They had both
gone down to the Cemetery, which, as a rule, is only
visited officially by the inhabitants of Simla.

A Simla funeral with the clergyman riding, the
mourners riding, and the coffin creaking as it swings
between the bearers, is one of the most depressing things
on this earth, particularly when the procession passes
under the wet, dank dip beneath the Rockcliffe Hotel,
where the sun is shut out, and all the hill streams are
wailing and weeping together as they go down the valleys.

Occasionally, folk tend the graves, but we in India
shift and are transferred so often that, at the end of the
second year, the Dead have no friends only acquaint-
ances who are far too busy amusing themselves up the
hill to attend to old partners. The idea of using a Ceme-
tery as a rendezvous is distinctly a feminine one. A
man would have said simply, 'Let people talk. We'll
go down fhe Mall.' A woman is made differently, es-
pecially if she be such a woman as the Man's Wife. She
and the Tertium Quid enjoyed each other's society
among the graves of men and women whom they had
known and danced with aforetime.

34

UNDER THE DEODARS

They used to take a big horse-blanket and sit on the
grass a little to the left of the lower end, where there
is a dip in the ground, and where the occupied graves
stop short and the ready-made ones are not ready.
Each well-regulated Indian Cemetery keeps half a
dozen graves permanently open for contingencies and
incidental wear and tear. In the Hills these are more
usually baby's size, because children who come up
weakened and sick from the Plains often succumb to the
effects of the Rains in the Hills or get pneumonia from
their ayahs taking them through damp pine-woods after
the sun has set. In Cantonments, of course, the. man's
size is more in request; these arrangements varying with
the climate and population.

One day when the Man's Wife and the Tertium Quid
had just arrived in the Cemetery, they saw some coolies
breaking ground. They had marked out a full-size
grave, and the Tertium Quid asked them whether any
Sahib was sick. They said that they did not know; but
it was an order that they should dig a SahiUs grave.

'Work away,' said the Tertium Quid, 'and let's see
how it's done.'

The coolies worked away, and the Man's Wife and
the Tertium Quid watched' and talked for a couple of
hours while the grave was being deepened. Then a
coolie, taking the earth in baskets as it was thrown up,
jumped over the grave.

'That's queer,' said the Tertium Quid. ' Where's my
ulster?'

'What's queer?' said the Man's Wife.

'I have got a chill down my back — just as if a goose
had walked over my^grave.'

'Why do you look at the thing, then?' said the Man'?
Wife. 'Let us go.'

AT THE PIT'S MOUTH

35

The Tertium Quid stood at the head of the grave,
and stared without answering for a space. Then he
said, dropping a pebble down, 'It is nasty — and cold:
horribly cold. I don't think I shall come to the Ceme-
tery any more. I don't think grave-digging is cheerful.'

The two talked and agreed that the Cemetery was
depressing. They also arranged for a ride next day
out from the Cemetery through the Mashobra Tunnel
up to Fagoo and back, because all the world was going
to a garden-party at Viceregal Lodge, and all the people
of Mashobra would go too.

Coming up the Cemetery road, the Tertium Quid's
horse tried to bolt up-hill, being tired with standing so
long, and managed to strain a back sinew.

'I shall have to take the mare to-morrow,' said the
Tertium Quid, 'and she will stand nothing heavier than
a snaffle.'

They made* their arrangements to meet in the Ceme-
tery, after allowing all the Mashobra people time to
pass into Simla. That night it rained heavily, and,
next day, when the Tertium Quid came to the trysting-
place, he saw that the new grave had a foot of water
in it, the ground being a tough and sour clay.

''Jove! That looks beastly,' said the Tertium Quid.
1 Fancy being boarded up and dropped into thai well!'

They then started off to Fagoo, the mare playing
with the snaffle and picking her way as though she
were shod with satin, and the sun shining divinely.
The road below Mashobra to Fagoo is officially styled
the HimSlayan-Thibet Road; but in spite of its name
it is not fnuch more than six feet wide in most places,
and the drop into the valley below may be anything
between one and two thousand feet.

'Now we're going to Thibet/ said the Man's Wife

36

UNDER THE DEODARS

merrily, as the horses drew near to Fagoo. She was
riding on the cliff-side.

'Into Thibet,' said the Tertium Quid, 'ever so far
from people who say horrid things, and hubbies who
write stupid letters. With you — to the end of the
world ! '

A coolie carrying a log of wood came round a corner,
and the mare went wide to avoid him — forefeet in and
haunches out, as a sensible mare should go.

'To the world's end,' said the Man's Wife, and looked
unspeakable things over her near shoulder at the Tertium
Quid.

He was smiling, but, while she looked, the smile
froze stiff as it were on his face, and changed to a ner-
vous grin — the sort of grin men wear when they are
not quite easy in their saddles. The mare seemed to
be sinking by the stern, and her nostrils cracked while
she was trying to realise what was happening. The
rain of the night before had rotted the drop-side of the
Himalayan-Thibet Road, and it was giving way under
her. 'What are you doing?' said the Man's Wife.
The Tertium Quid gave no answer. He grinned ner-
vously and set his spurs into the mare, who rapped
with her forefeet on the road, and the struggle began.
The Man's Wife screamed, 'Oh, Frank, get off!'

But the Tertium Quid was glued to the saddle — his
face blue and white — and he looked into the Man's
Wife's eyes. Then the Man's Wife clutched at the
mare's head and caught her by the nose instead of the
bridle. The brute threw up her head and went down
with a scream, the Tertium Quid upon her, and the ner-
vous grin still set on his face.

The Man's Wife heard the tinkle-tinkle of little
stones and loose earth falling off the roadway, and the

AT THE PIT'S MOUTH

37

sliding roar of the man and horse going down. Then
everything was quiet, and she called on Frank to leave
his mare and walk up. But Frank did not answer.
He was underneath the mare, nine hundred feet below,
spoiling a patch of Indian corn.

As the revellers came back from Viceregal Lodge in the
mists of the evening, they met a temporarily insane wo-
man, on a temporarily mad horse, swinging round the
corners, with her eyes and her mouth open, and her head
like the head of a Medusa. She was stopped by a man at
the risk of his life, and taken out of the saddle, a limp
heap, and put on the bank to explain herself. This
wasted twenty minutes, and then she was sent home in a
lady's 'rickshaw, still with her mouth open and her hands
picking at her riding-gloves.

She was in bed through the following three days,
which were rainy; so she missed attending the funeral of
the Tertium Quid, who was lowered into eighteen inches of
water, instead of the twelve to which he had first objected.

A WAYSIDE COMEDY

Because to every purpose there is time and judgment, therefore the
misery of man is great upon him. — Eccles. viii. 6.

Fate and the Government of India have turned the
Station of Kashima into a prison; and, because there is
no help for the poor souls who are now lying there in tor-
ment, I write this story, praying that the Government of
India may be moved to scatter the European population
to the four winds.

Kashima is bounded on all sides by the rock-tipped
circle of the Dosehri hills. In Spring, it is ablaze with
roses; in Summer, the roses die and the hot winds blow
from the hills; in Autumn, the white mists from the jhils
cover the place as with water, and in Winter the frosts nip
everything young and tender to earth-level. There is
but one view in Kashima — a stretch of perfectly flat
pasture and plough-land, running up to the gray-blue
scrub of the Dosehri hills.

There are no amusements, except snipe and tiger-shoot -
ing; but the tigers have been long since hunted from their
lairs in the rock-caves, and the snipe only come once a year.
Narkarra — one hundred and forty-three miles by road —
is the nearest station to Kashima. But Kashima never
goes to Narkarra, where there are at least twelve English
people. It stays within the circle of the Dosehri hills.

All Kashima acquits Mrs. Vansuythen of any intention
to do harm; but all Kashima knows that she, and she
alone, brought about their pain.

33

A WAYSIDE COMEDY

39

Boulte, the Engineer, Mrs. Boulte, and Captain Kurr^ll
know this. They are the English population of Kashima:,,
if we except Major Vansuythen, who is of no importance
whatever, and Mrs. Vansuythen, who is the most impor-
tant of all.

You must remember, though you will not understand,
that all laws weaken in a small and hidden community
where there is no public opinion. When a man is ab-
solutely alone in a Station he runs a certain risk of
Tailing into evil ways. This risk is multiplied by every
addition to the population up to twelve — the Jury-
number. After that, fear and consequent restraint
begin, and human action becomes less grotesquely
jerky.

There was deep peace in Kashima till Mrs. Vansuythen
arrived. She was a charming woman, every one said so
everywhere ; and she charmed every one. In spite of this,
or, perhaps, because of this, since Fate is so perverse, she
cared only for one man, and he was Major Vansuythen.
Had she been plain or stupid, this matter would have been
intelligible to Kashima. But she was a fair woman, with
very still gray eyes, the colour of a lake just before the
light of the sun touches it. No man who had seen those
eyes could, later on, explain what fashion of woman she
was to look upon. The eyes dazzled him. Her own sex
said that she was ' not bad looking, but spoilt by pretend-
ing to be so grave.' And yet her gravity was natural. It
was not her habit to smile. She merely went through
life, looking at those who passed; and the women objected
while the men fell down and worshipped.

SHe knows and is deeply sorry for the evil she has done
to Kashima; but Major Vansuythen cannot understand
why Mrs. Boulte does not drop ID to afternoon tea at
least three times a week. 'When there are only two

40 UNDER THE DEODARS

women in one Station, they ought to see a great deal of
each other/ says Major Vansuythen.

Long and long before ever Mrs. Vansuythen came out
of those far-away places where there is society and amuse-
ment, Kurrell had discovered that Mrs. Boulte was the
one woman in the world for him and — you dare not blame
them. • Kashima was as out of the world as Heaven or the
Other Place, and the Dosehri hills kept their secret well.
Boulte had no concern in the matter. He was in camp
for a fortnight at a time. He was a hard, heavy man, and
neither Mrs. Boulte nor Kurrell pitied him. They had all
Kashima and each other for their very, very own; and
Kashima was the Garden of Eden in those days. When
Boulte returned from his wanderings he would slap Kur-
rell between the shoulders and call him 'old fellow,' and
the three would dine together. Kashima was happy then
when the judgment of God seemed almost as distant as
Narkarra or the railway that ran down to the sea. But
the Government sent Major Vansuythen to Kashima, and
with him came his wife.

The etiquette of Kashima is much the same as that of a
desert island. When a stranger is cast away there, all
hands go down to the shore to make him welcome.
Kashima assembled at the masonry platform close to the
Narkarra Road, and spread tea for the Vansuythens.
That ceremony was reckoned a formal call, and made
them free of the Station, its rights and privileges. When
the Vansuythens were settled down, they gave a tiny
house-warming to all Kashima; and that made Kashima
free of their house, according to the immemorial usage of
the Station.

Then the Rains came, when no one could go into
camp, and the Narkarra Road was washed away by the
Kasun River, and in the cup-like pastures of Kashima the

A WAYSIDE COMEDY

4i

cattle waded knee-deep. The clouds dropped down from
the Dosehri hills and covered everything.

At the end of the Rains, Boulte's manner towards his
wife changed and became demonstratively affectionate.
They had been married twelve years, and the change
startled Mrs. Boulte, who hated her husband with the
hate of a woman who has met with nothing but kindness
from her mate, and, in the teeth of this kindness, has done
him a great wrong. Moreover, she had her own trouble to
light with — her watch to keep over her own property,
Kurrell. For two months the Rains had hidden the
Dosehri hills and many other things besides; but, when
they lifted, they showed Mrs. Boulte that her man
among men, her Ted — for she called him Ted in the old
days when Boulte was out of earshot — was slipping the
links of the allegiance.

'The Vansuythen Woman has taken him,' Mrs. Boulte
said to herself; and when Boulte was away, wept over her
belief, in the face of the over-vehement blandishments of
Ted. Sorrow in Kashima is as fortunate as Love, be-
cause there is nothing to weaken it save the flight of
Time. Mrs. Boulte had never breathed her suspicion tc
Kurrell because she was not certain; and her nature led
her to be very certain before she took steps in any direc-
tion. That is why she behaved as she did.

Boulte came into the house one evening, and leaned
against the door-posts of the drawing-room, chewing his
moustache. Mrs. Boulte was putting some flowers into a
vase. There is a pretence of civilisation even in Kashima.

'Little woman,' said Boulte quietly, 'do you care for
me?'

'Immensely,' said she, with a laugh. 'Can you ask it? '
'But I'm serious,' said Boulte. Do >ou care lor
me?'

42

UNDER THE DEODARS

Mrs. Boulte dropped the flowers, and turned round
quickly. * Do you want an honest answer? '
' Ye-es, I've asked for it.'

Mrs. Boulte spoke in a low, even voice for five minutes,
very distinctly, that there might be no misunderstanding
her meaning. When Samson broke the pillars of Gaza, he
did a little thing, and one not to be compared to the
deliberate pulling down of a woman's homestead about
her own ears. There was no wise female friend to advise
Mrs. Boulte, the singularly cautious wife, to hold her
hand. She struck at Boulte's heart, because her own
was sick with suspicion of Kurrell, and worn out with the
long strain of watching alone through the Rains. There
was no plan or purpose in her speaking. The sentences
made themselves; and Boulte listened, leaning against the
door-post with his hands in his pockets. When all was
over, and Mrs. Boulte began to breathe through her nose
before breaking out into tears, he laughed and stared
straight in front of him at the Dosehri hills.

' Is that all? ' he said. ' Thanks, I only wanted to know,
you know.'

'What are you going to do?' said the woman, between
her sobs.

'Do! Nothing. What should I do? Kill Kurrell or
send you Home, or apply for leave to get a divorce? It's
two days ' dak into Narkarra . ' He laughed again and wen t
on: 'I'll tell you what you can do. You can ask Kurrell
to dinner to-morrow — no, on Thursday, that will allow
you time to pack — and you can bolt with him. I give
you my word I won't follow.'

He took up his helmet and went out of the room, and
Mrs. Boulte sat till the moonlight streaked the floor,
thinking and thinking and thinking. She had done her
best upon the spur of the moment to pull the house down;

A WAYSIDE COMEDY

but it would not fall. Moreover, she could not under-
stand her husband, and she was afraid. Then the folly of
her useless truthfulness struck her, and she was ashamed
to write to Kurrell, saying: 'I have gone mad and told
everything. My husband says that I am free to elope
with you. Get a dak for Thursday, and we will fly after
dinner.' There was a cold-bloodedness about that proce-
dure which did not appeal to her. So she sat still in her
own house and thought.

At dinner-time Boulte came back from his walk, white
and worn and haggard, and the woman was touched at his
distress. As the evening wore on, she muttered some ex-
pression of sorrow, something approaching to contrition.
Boulte came out of a brown study and said, ' Oh, that ! I
wasn't thinking about that. By the way, what does
Kurrell say to the elopement? '

' I haven't seen him,' said Mrs. Boulte. ' Good God ! is
that all? '

But Boulte was not listening, and her sentence ended in
a gulp.

The next day brought no comfort to Mrs. Boulte, for
Kurrell did not appear, and the new life that she, in the
five minutes' madness of the previous evening, had hoped
to build out of the ruins of the old, seemed to be no nearer.

Boulte ate his breakfast, advised her to see her Arab
pony fed in the veranda, and went out. The morning
wore through, and at midday the tension became unen-
durable. Mrs. Boulte could not cry. She had finished
her crying in the night, and now she did not want to be
left alone. Perhaps the Vansuythen Woman would talk
to her; and, since talking opens the heart, perhaps then-
might be s<3me comfort to be found in her company. She
was the only other woman in the Station.

In Kashima there are no regular ( ailing-hours. Kvcry

44

UNDER THE DEODARS

one can drop in upon every one else at pleasure. Mrs.
Boulte put on a big terai hat, and walked across to the
Vansuythens' house to borrow last week's Queen. The
two compounds touched, and instead of going up the
drive, she crossed through the gap in the cactus-hedge,
entering the house from the back. As she passed through
the dining-room, she heard, behind the purdah that
cloaked the drawing-roorn door, her husband's voice,
saying —

'But on my Honour! On my Soul and Honour,
I tell you she doesn't care for me. She told me so
last night. I would have told you then if Vansuy-
then hadn't been with you. If it is for her sake that
you'll have nothing to say to me, you can make your
mind easy. It's Kurrell '

'What?' said Mrs. Vansuythen, with an hysterical
little laugh. 'Kurrell! Oh, it can't be! You two
must have made some horrible mistake. Perhaps yow
—you lost your temper, or misunderstood, or something.
Things can't be as wrong as you say.'

Mrs. Vansuythen had shifted her defence to avoid
the man's pleading, and was desperately trying to keep
him to a side-issue.

'There must be some mistake,' she insisted, 'and it
can be all put right again/

Boulte laughed grimly.

'It can't be Captain Kurrell! He told me that he had
never taken the least — the least interest in your wife,
Mr. Boulte. Oh, do listen! He said he had not. He
swore he had not,' said Mrs. Vansuythen.

The purdah rustled, and the speech was cut short
by the entry of a little, thin woman, with big rings
round her eyes. Mrs. Vansuythen stood up with a

A WAYSIDE COMEDY

45

'What was that you said?' asked Mrs. Boulte. ' Never
mind that man. What did Ted say to you? What did
he say to you? What did he say to you?'

Mrs. Vansuythen sat down helplessly on the sofa,
overborne by the trouble of her questioner.

'He said — I can't remember exactly what he said —

but I understood him to say — that is But, really,

Mrs. Boulte, isn't it rather a strange question?'

' Will you tell me what he said? ' repeated Mrs. Boulte.
Even a tiger will fly before a bear robbed of her whelps,
and Mrs. Vansuythen was only an ordinarily good wo-
man. She began in a sort of desperation: 'Well, he
said that he never cared for you at all, and, of course,
there was not the least reason why he should have, and
— and — that was all.'

'You said he swore he had not cared for me. Was
that true?'

'Yes,' said Mrs. Vansuythen very softly.

Mrs. Boulte wavered for an instant where she stood,
and then fell forward fainting.

'What did I tell you?' said Boulte, as though the
conversation had been unbroken. 'You can sec for
yourself. She cares for him.' The light began to
break into his dull mind, and he went on — 'And hc-
what was he saying to you? '

But Mrs. Vansuythen, with no heart for explana-
tions or impassioned protestations, was kneeling over
Mrs. Boulte.

'Oh, you brute!' she cried. 'Are all men like this?
Help me to get her into my room and her lace is cut
against the table. Oh, will yon be quiet, and help un-
to carry he'r? I hate you, and 1 hate Captain Knrrell.
Lift her up carefully and now go! (it) away!'

Boulte carried his wife into Mrs. Yansuvthen's bed-

46

UNDER THE DEODARS

room and departed before the storm of that lady's
wrath and disgust, impenitent and burning with jeal-
ousy. Kurrell had been making love to Mrs. Vansuy-
then — would do Vansuythen as great a wrong as he had
done Boulte, who caught himself considering whether
Mrs. Vansuythen would faint if she discovered that the
man she loved had foresworn her.

In the middle of these meditations, Kurrell came
cantering along the road and pulled up with a cheery,
' Good-mornin'. 'Been mashing Mrs. Vansuythen as
usual, eh? Bad thing for a sober, married man, that.
What will Mrs. Boulte say?'

Boulte raised his head and said slowly, 'Oh, you
liar!' KurrelPs face changed. 'What's that?' he asked
quickly.

'Nothing much,' said Boulte. 'Has my wife told
you that you two are free to go off whenever you please?
She has been good enough to explain the situation to
me. You've been a true friend to me, Kurrell — old
man — haven't you?'

Kurrell groaned, and tried to frame some sort of
idiotic sentence about being willing to give 'satisfac-
tion.' But his interest in the woman was dead, had
died out in the Rains, and, mentally, he was abusing
her for her amazing indiscretion. It would have been
so easy to have broken off the thing gently and by de-
grees, and now he was saddled with Boulte's voice

recalled him.

'I don't think I should get any satisfaction from kill-
ing you, and I'm pretty sure you'd get none from kill-
ing me.'

Then in a querulous tone, ludicrously disproportioned
to his wrongs, Boulte added —

"Seems rather a pity that you haven't the decency

A WAYSIDE COMEDY

47

to keep to the woman, now you've got her. You've
been a true friend to her too, haven't you?'

Kurrell stared long and gravely. The situation was
getting beyond him.

'What do you mean?' he said.

Boulte answered, more to himself than the questioner:
'My wife came over to Mrs. Vansuythen's just now;
and it seems you'd been telling Mrs. Vansuythen that
you'd never cared for Emma. I suppose you lied, as
usual. What had Mrs. Vansuythen to do with you, or
you with her? Try to speak the truth for once in a way.'

Kurrell took the double insult without wincing, and
replied by another question: 'Go on. What hap-
pened?'

'Emma fainted,' said Boulte simply. 'But, look here,
what had you been saying to Mrs. Vansuythen?'

Kurrell laughed. Mrs. Boulte had, with unbridled
tongue, made havoc of his plans; and he could at least
retaliate by hurting the man in whose eyes he was hu-
miliated and shown dishonourable.

'Said to her? What does a man tell a lie like that
for? I suppose I said pretty much what you've said,
unless I'm a good deal mistaken.'

'I spoke the truth,' said Boulte, again more to him-
self than Kurrell. ' Emma told me she hated me. She
has no right in me.'

'No! I suppose not. You're only her husband,
y'know. And what did Mrs. Vansuythen say after you
had laid your disengaged heart at her feet?'

Kurrell felt almost virtuous as he put the question.

'f don't think that matters,' Boulte replied; 'and it
doesn't concern you.'

'Hut it does! I tell you it does' began Kurrell
shamelessly.

48

UNDER THE DEODARS

The sentence was cut by a roar of laughter from
Boulte's lips. Kurrell was silent for an instant, and
then he, too, laughed — laughed long and loudly, rock-
ing in his saddle. It was an unpleasant sound — the
mirthless mirth of these men on the long, white line
of the Narkarra Road. There were no strangers in
Kashima, or they might have thought that captivity t
within the Dosehri hills had driven half the European
population mad. The laughter ended abruptly, and Kur-
rell was the first to speak.

'Well, what are you going to do?'

Boulte looked up the road, and at the hills. 'Noth-
ing,' said he quietly; 'what's the use? It's too ghastly
for anything. We must let the old life go on. I can
only call you a hound and a liar, and I can't go on calling
you names for ever. Besides which, I don't feel that I'm
much better. We can't get out of this place. What is
there to do?'

Kurrell looked round the rat-pit of Kashima and made
no reply. The injured husband took up the wondrous tale.

'Ride on, and speak to Emma if you want to. God
knows / don't care what you do.'

He walked forward, and left Kurrell gazing blankly
after him. Kurrell did not ride on either to see Mrs.
Boulte or Mrs. Vansuythen. He sat in his saddle and
thought, while his pony grazed by the roadside.

The whir of approaching wheels roused him. Mrs.
Vansuythen was driving home Mrs. Boulte, white and
wan, with a cut on her forehead.

'Stop, please,' said Mrs. Boulte, 'I want to speak to
Ted.'

Mrs. Vansuythen obeyed, but as Mrs. Boulte leaned
forward, putting her hand upon the splash-board of the
dog-cart, Kurrell spoke.

A WAYSIDE COMEDY

'Fve seen your husband, Mrs. Boulte.'

There was no necessity for any further explanation.
The man's eyes were fixed, not upon Mrs. Boulte, but
her companion. Mrs. Boulte saw the look.

'Speak to him!' she pleaded, turning to the woman
at her side. 'Oh, speak to him! Tell him what you
told me just now. Tell him you hate him. Tell him
you hate him!'

She bent forward and wept bitterly, while the
sais, impassive, went forward to hold the horse.
Mrs. Vansuythen turned scarlet and dropped the
reins. She wished to be no party to such unholy explana-
tions.

'I've nothing to do with it,' she began coldly; but
Mrs. Boulte's sobs overcame her, and she addressed
herself to the man. 'I don't know what I am to
say, Captain Kurrell. I don't know what I can
call you. I think you've — you've behaved abomi-
nably, and she has cut her forehead terribly against the
table.'

'It doesn't hurt. It isn't anything,' said Mrs. Boulte
feebly. 'That doesn't matter. Tell him what you
told me. Say you don't care for him. Oh, Ted, ivoift
you believe her? '

'Mrs. Boulte has made me understand that you were
— that you were fond of her once upon a time,' went on
Mrs. Vansuythen.

'Well!' said Kurrell brutally. 'It seems to me (hat
Mrs. Boulte had better be fond of her own husband
first.' m

'Stop!'" said Mrs. Vansuythen. 'Hear me first. I
don't carfe — I don't want to know anything about you
and Mrs. Boulte; but I want yon to know that 1 hate
you, that I think you are a cur, and that I'll never,

UNDER THE DEODARS

never speak to you again. Oh, I don't dare to say what
I think of you, you — man ! '

'I want to speak to Ted,' moaned Mrs. Boulte, but
the dog-cart rattled on, and Kurrell was left on the
road, shamed, and boiling with wrath against Mrs. Boulte.

He waited till Mrs. Vansuythen was driving back to
her own house, and, she being freed from the embarrass-
ment of Mrs. Boulte's presence, learned for the second
time her opinion of himself and his actions.

In the evenings, it was the wont of all Kashima to
meet at the platform on the Narkarra Road, to drink tea,
and discuss the trivialities of the day. Major Vansuy-
then and his wife found themselves alone at the gather-
ing-place for almost the first time in their remembrance;
and the cheery Major, in the teeth of his wife's remark-
ably reasonable suggestion that the rest of the Station
might be sick, insisted upon driving round to the two
bungalows and unearthing the population.

'Sitting in the twilight!' said he, with great indig-
nation, to the Boultes. 'That'll never do! Hang it
all, we're one family here! You must come out, and
so must Kurrell. I'll make him bring his banjo.'

So great is the power of honest simplicity and a good
digestion over guilty consciences that all Kashima did
turn out, even down to the banjo; and the Major em-
braced the company in one expansive grin. As he
grinned, Mrs. Vansuythen raised her eyes for an instant
and looked at all Kashima. Her meaning was clear.
Major Vansuythen would never know anything. He
was to be the outsider in that happy family whose cage
was the Dosehri hills.

'You're singing villainously out of tune, Kurrell/
said the Major truthfully. 'Pass me that banjo.'

A WAYSIDE COMEDY

5i

And he sang in excruciating-wise till the stars came out
and all Kashima went to dinner.

That was the beginning of the New Life of Kashima
— the life that Mrs. Boulte made when her tongue was
loosened in the twilight.

Mrs. Vansuythen has never told the Major; and since
he insists upon keeping up a burdensome geniality, she
has been compelled to break her vow of not speaking to
Kurrell. This speech, which must of necessity preserve
the semblance of politeness and interest, serves admirably
to keep alight the flame of jealousy and dull hatred in
Boulte's bosom, as it awakens the same passions in his
wife's heart. Mrs. Boulte hates Mrs. Vansuythen be
cause she has taken Ted from her, and, in some curious
fashion, hates her because Mrs. Vansuythen — and here
the wife's eyes see far more clearly than the husband's —
detests Ted. And Ted — that gallant captain and honour-
able man — knows now that it is possible to hate a woman
once loved, to the verge of wishing to silence her for ever
with blows. Above all, is he shocked that Mrs. Boulte
cannot see the error of her ways.

Boulte and he go out tiger-shooting together in all
friendship. Boulte has put their relationship on a more
satisfactory footing.

'You're a blackguard,' he says to Kurrell, 'and I've
lost any self-respect I may ever have had; but when
you're with me, I can feel certain that you are not with
Mrs. Vansuythen, or making Emma miserable.1

Kurrell endures anything that Boulte may say to him.
Sometimes they are away for three days together, and
then the Major insists upon his wile going over to sit w ith
Mrs. Boulte; although Mrs. Vansuythen has repeatedly

52

UNDER THE DEODARS

declared that she prefers her husband's company to any
in the world. From the way in which she clings to him,
she would certainly seem to be speaking the truth.

But of course, as the Major says, 'in a little Station we
must all be friendly.' .

THE PIT THAT THEY DIGGED1

Mr. Hawkins Mumrath, of Her Majesty's Bengal Civil
Service, lay down to die of enteric fever; and, being
a thorough-minded man, so nearly accomplished his
purpose that all his friends, two doctors, and the Govern-
ment he served gave him up for lost. Indeed, upon a
false rumour the night before he rallied, several journals
published very pleasant obituary notices, which, three
weeks later, Mr. Mumrath sat up in bed and studied with
interest. It is strange to read about yourself in the past
tense, and soothing to discover that for all your faults,
your world 'might have spared a better man.' When a
Bengal civilian is tepid and harmless, newspapers always
conclude their notices with this reflection. It entirely
failed to amuse Mr. Mumrath.

The loving-kindness of the Government provides for
the use of its servants in the East luxuries undreamed of
by other civilizations. A State-paid doctor closed Mum-
rath's eyes, — till Mumrath insisted upon opening them
again; a subventionized undertaker bought Government
timber for a Government coffin, and the great Cemetery
of St. Golgotha-in-Partibus prepared, according to regula-
tion, a brick-lined grave, headed and edged, with masonry
rests for the coffin. The cost of that grave was 175 rupees
14 annas, including the lease of the land in perpetuity.
Very minute are the instruc tions of the Government for
the disposal, wharfage, and demurrage of its dead; but the
actual arrangements are not published in any appendix to

•Copyright, i8gs. bj Mahullan ii Co.

53

54

UNDER THE DEODARS

pay and pension rules, for the same reason that led a
Prussian officer not to leave his dead and wounded too
long in the sight of a battery under fire.

Mr. Mumrath recovered and went about his work, to
the disgust of his juniors who had hoped promotion from
his 'decease. The undertaker sold the coffin, at a profit,
to a fat Armenian merchant in Calcutta, and the State-
paid doctor profited in practice by Mumrath's resurrec-
tion from the dead. The Cemetery of St. Golgotha-in-
Partibus sat down by the head of the new-made grave
with the beautiful brick fining, and waited for the corpse
then signing despatches in 'an office three miles away.
The yearly accounts were made up; and there remained
over, unpaid for, one grave, cost 175 rupees 14 annas.
The vouchers for all the other graves carried the name of
a deceased servant of the Government. Only one space
was blank in the column.

Then Ahutosh Lai Deb, Sub-deputy Assistant in the
Accounts Department, being full of zeal for the State and
but newly appointed to his important post, wrote officially
to the Cemetery, desiring to know the inwardness of that
grave, and ' having the honour to be,' etc. The Cemetery
wrote officially that there was no inwardness at all, but a
complete emptiness; said grave having been ordered for
Mr. Hawkins Mumrath, and 'had the honour to remain. '
Ahutosh Lai Deb had the honour to point out that, the
grave being unused, the Government could by no means
pay for it. The Cemetery wished to know if the account
could be carried over to the next year, ' pending antici-
pated taking-up of grave.'

Ahutosh Lai Deb said that he was not going to have the
accounts confused. Discrepancy was the soul of badi-
nage and defalcations. The Cemetery would be good
enough to adjust on the financial basis of that year.

THE PIT THAT THEY DIGGED

55

The Cemetery wished they might be buried if they saw
their way to doing it, and there really had been more than
two thousand burned bricks put into the lining of the
grave. Meantime, they complained, the Government
Brickfield Audit was waiting until all material should
have been paid for.

Ahutosh Lai Deb wrote: ' Refer to Mr. Mumrath.' The
Cemetery referred semi-officially. It struck them as
being rather a delicate matter, but orders are orders.

Hawkins Mumrath wrote back, saying that he had the
honour to be quite well, and riot in the least in need of a
grave, brick-lined or otherwise. He recommended the
head of the Cemetery to get into that grave and stay
there. The Cemetery forwarded the letter to Ahutosh
Lai Deb, for reference and order.

Ahutosh Lai Deb forwarded it to the Provincial Gov-
ernment, who filed it behind a mass of other files and for-
got all about it.

A fat she -cobra crawled into the neglected grave, and
laid her eggs among the bricks. The Rains fell, and a
little sprinkling of grass jewelled the brick floor.

The Cemetery wrote to Ahutosh La] Deb, advising
him that Mr. Mumrath had not paid for the grave, and re-
questing that the sum might be stopped from his monthly
pay. Ahutosh Lai Deb sent the letter to Hawkins Mum-
rath as a reminder.

Hawkins Mumrath swore; but when he had sworn, he
began to feel frightened. The enteric lever had destroyed
his nerve. He wrote to the Accounts Department, pro-
testing against the injustice of paying lor a grave before-
hand. Deductions for pension or widow's annuity were
quite right, but this sort of deduction was an imposition
besides being sarcastic.

Ahutosh Lai Deb wrote that Mr. Mumrath 's style was

.0

UNDER THE DEODARS

not one usually employed in official correspondence, and
requested him to modulate it and pay for the grave.
Hawkins Mumrath tossed the letter into the fire, and
wrote to the Provincial Government.

The Provincial Government had the honour to point
out that the matter rested entirely between .Mr. Hawkins
Mumrath and the Accounts Department. They saw no
reason to interfere till the money was actually deducted
from the pay. In that eventuality, if Mr. Hawkins Mum-
rath appealed through the proper channels, he might, if
the matter were properly reported upon, get a refund, less
the cost of his last letter, which was under-stamped. The
Cemetery wrote to Ahutosh Lai Deb, enclosing triplicate
of grave-bill and demanding some sort of settlement.

Ahutosh Lai Deb deducted 175 rupees 14 annas from
Mumrath's monthly pay. Mumrath appealed through
the proper channels. The Provincial Government wrote
that the expenses of all Government graves solely con-
cerned the Supreme Government, to whom his letter had
been forwarded.

Mumrath wrote to the Supreme Government. The
Supreme Government had the honour to explain that the
management of St. Golgotha-in-Partibus was under
direct control of the Provincial Government, to whom
they had had the honour of forwarding his communica-
tion. Mumrath telegraphed to the Cemetery to this
effect.

The Cemetery telegraphed: 'Fiscal and finance, Su-
preme; management of internal affairs, Provincial Gov-
ernment. Refer Revenue and Agricultural Department
for grave details.'

Mumrath referred to the Revenue and Agricultural
Department. That Department had the honour to make
clear that it was only concerned in the plantation of trees

THE PIT THAT THEY DIGGED

57

round the Cemetery. The Forest Department con-
trolled the reboisement of the edges of the paths.

Mumrath forwarded all the letters to Ahutosh Lai Deb,
with a request for an immediate refund under 'Rule 431
A, Supplementary Addenda, Bengal.' He invented rule
and reference pro re nata, having some knowledge of the
workings of the Babu mind.

The crest of the Revenue and Agricultural Department
frightened Ahutosh Lai Deb more than the reference. He
bewilderedly granted the refund, and recouped the Gov-
ernment from the Cemetery Establishment allowance.

The Cemetery Establishment Executive Head wanted
to know what Ahutosh Lai Deb meant.

The Accountant-General wanted to know what Ahu-
tosh Lai Deb meant.

The Provincial Government wanted to know what
Ahutosh Lai Deb meant.

The Revenue and Agriculture, the Forest Department,
and the Government Harness Depot, which supplies the
leather slings for the biers, all wanted to know what the
deuce Ahutosh Lai Deb meant.

Ahutosh Lai Deb referred them severally to Mr. Haw-
kins Mumrath, who had driven out to chuckle over his
victory all alone at the head of the brick-lined grave with
the masonry foot rests.

The she-cobra was sunning herself by the edge of the
grave with her little ones about her, for the eggs had
hatched out beautifully. Hawkins Mumrath stepped
absently on the old lady's tail, and she bit him in the
ankle. .

Hawkins Mumrath drove home very quieklv, and died
in live hours and three quarters,

Then Ahutosh Lai Deb passed the entry to 'regular
account,' and there was peace in India.

THE HILL OF ILLUSION

What rendered vain their deep desire?
A God, a God their severance ruled,
And bade between their shores to be
The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea.

Matthew Arnola.

He. Tell your jhampanis not to hurry so, dear. They
forget I'm fresh from the Plains.

She. Sure proof that / have not been going out with
any one. Yes, they are an untrained crew. Where do we
go?

He. As usual — to the world's end. No, Jakko.
She. Have your pony led after you, then. It's a long
round.

He. And for the last time, thank Heaven !

She. Do you mean that still? I didn't dare to write to
you about it — all these months.

He. Mean it! I've been shaping my affairs to that
end since Autumn. What makes you speak as though
it had occurred to you for the first time?

She. I? Oh! I don't know. I've had long enough
to think, too.

He. And you've changed your mind?

She. No. You ought to know that I am a miracle
of constancy. What are your — arrangements?

He. Ours, Sweetheart, please.

She. Ours, be it then. My poor boy, how the
prickly heat has marked your forehead! Have you
ever tried sulphate of copper in water?

58

THE HILL OF ILLUSION

59

He. It'll go away in a day or two up here. The
arrangements are simple enough. Tonga in the early
morning — reach Kalka at twelve — Umballa at seven
— down, straight by night train, to Bombay, and
then the steamer of the 21st for Rome. That's
my idea. The Continent and Sweden — a ten-week
honeymoon.

She. Ssh! Don't talk of it in that way. It makes
me afraid. Guy, how long have we two been insane?

He. Seven months and fourteen days, I forget the
odd hours exactly, but I'll think.

She. I only wanted to see if you remembered. Who
are those two on the Blessington Road?

He. Eabrey and the Penner woman. What do
they matter to us ? Tell me everything that you've
been doing and saying and thinking;

She. Doing little, saying less, and thinking a great
deal. I've hardly been out at all.

He. That was wrong of you. You haven't been
moping?

She. Not very much. Can you wonder that I'm
disinclined for amusement?

He. Frankly, I do. Where was the difficulty?

She. In this only. The more people I know and
the more I'm known here, the wider spread will be the
news of the crash when it comes. 1 don't like that.

He. Nonsense. We shall be out of it.

She. You think so?

He. I'm sure of it, if there is any power in steam
or horse-flesh to carry us away. Ha! ha!

She. And the fun of the situation comes in — where,
my Lancelot?

He. Nowhere, Guinevere. T was only thinking of
something.

6o

UNDER THE DEODARS

She. They say men have a keener sense of humour
than women. Now / was thinking of the scandal.

He. Don't think of anything so ugly. We shall
be beyond it.

She. It will be there all the same — in the mouths
of Simla — telegraphed over India, and talked of at the
dinners — and when He goes out they will stare at Him to
see how He takes it. And we shall be dead, Guy dear —
dead and cast into the outer darkness where there is

He. Love at least. Isn't that enough?

She. I have said so.

He. And you think so still?

She. What do you think?

He. What have I done ? It means equal ruin to
me, as the world reckons it — outcasting, the loss of
my appointment, the breaking off my life's work. I
pay my price.

She. And are you so much above the world that
you can afford to pay it? Am I?

He. My Divinity — what else?

She. A very ordinary woman I'm afraid, but, so far,
respectable. How d'you do, Mrs. Middleditch? Your
husband? I think he's riding down to Annandale
with Colonel Statters. Yes, isn't it divine after the

rain? Guy, how long am I to be allowed to bow

to Mrs. Middleditch? Till the 17th?

He. Frowsy Scotchwoman! What is the use of
bringing her into the discussion? You were saying?

She. Nothing. Have you ever seen a man hanged?

He. Yes. Once.

She. What was it for?

He. Murder, of course.

She, Murder. Is that so great a sin after all? I
wonder how he felt before the drop fell.

THE HILL OF ILLUSION

61

He. I don't think he felt much. What a gruesome
little woman it is this evening! You're shivering. Put
on your cape, dear.

She. I think I will. Oh! Look at the mist com-
ing over Sanjaoli; and I thought we should have sun-
shine on the Ladies' Mile! Let's turn back.

He. What's the good? There's a cloud on Elysium
Hill, and that means it's foggy all down the Mall. We'll
go on. It'll blow away before we get to the Convent,
perhaps. 'Jove! It is chilly.

She. You feel it, fresh from below. Put on your
ulster. What do you think of my cape?

He. Never ask a man his opinion of a woman's
dress when he is desperately and abjectly in love with
the wearer. Let me look. Like everything else of
yours it's perfect. Where did you get it from?

She. He gave it me, on Wednesday — our wedding-
day, you know.

He. The Deuce he did! He's growing generous
in his old age. D'you like all that frilly, bunchy stuff
at the throat? I don't.

She. Don't you?

Kind Sir, o' your courtesy,

As you go by the town, Sir,
'Pray you o' your love for me,

Buy me a russet gown, Sir.

He. I won't say: 'Keek into the draw-well, Janet,
Janet.' CTnly wait a little, darling, and you shall be
stocked wilh russet gowns and everything else.

She. And when the frocks wear out, you'll get me
new ones and everything else?

He. Assuredly.

Sue. I wonder!

62

UNDER THE DEODARS

He. Look here, Sweetheart, I didn't spend two
days and two nights in the train to hear you wonder,
I thought we'd settled all that at Shaifazehat.

She (dreamily). At Shaifazehat? Does the Sta-
tion go on still? That was ages and ages ago. It must
be crumbling to pieces. All except the Amirtollah
kutcha road. I don't believe that could crumble till the
Day of Judgment.

He. You think so? What is the mood now?

She. I can't tell. How cold it is! Let us get on
quickly.

He. 'Better walk a little. Stop your jhampanis and
get out. What's the matter with you this evening, dear?

She. Nothing. You must grow accustomed to my
ways. If I'm boring you I can go home. Here's Cap-
tain Congleton coming, I daresay he'll be willing to es-
cort me.

He. Goose! Between us, too! Damn Captain
Congleton !

She. Chivalrous Knight. Is it your habit to swear
much in talking? It jars a little, and you might swear
at me.

He. My angel! I didn't know what I was saying;
and you changed so quickly that I couldn't follow. I'll
apologise in dust and ashes.

She. There'll be enough of those later on Good-
night, Captain Congleton. Going to the singing-
quadrilles already? What dances am I giving you next
week? No ! You must have written them down wrong.
Five and Seven, / said. If you've made a mistake, I
certainly don't intend to suffer for it. You must alter
your programme.

He. I thought you told me that you had not been
going out much this season?

THE HILL OF ILLUSION 63

ft

She. Quite true, but when I do I dance with Captain
Congleton. He dances very nicely.

He. And sit out with him I suppose?

She. Yes. Have you any objection? Shall I stand
under the chandelier in future?

He. What does he talk to you about?

She. What do men talk about when they sit out?

He. Ugh! Don't! Well now I'm up, you must dis-
pense with the fascinating Congleton for a while. I
don't like him.

She {after a pause) . Do you know what you have said?

He. 'Can't say that I do exactly. I'm not in the
best of tempers.

She. So I see, — and feel. My true and faithful
lover, where is your 'eternal constancy,' 'unalterable
trust,' and 'reverent devotion'? I remember those
phrases; you seem to have forgotten them. I mention
a man's name

He. A good deal more than that.

She. Well, speak to him about a dance — perhaps
the last dance that I shall ever dance in my life before
I, — before I go away; and you at once distrust and
insult me.

He. I never said a word.

She. How much did you imply? Guy, is this
amount of confidence to be our stock to start the new
life on?

He. No, of course not. I didn't mean that. On
my word and honour, I didn't. Let it pass, dear.
Please let it pass.

She. This once yes and a second time, and
again and again, all through the years when I shall be
unable to resent it. You want to;> much, my Lancelot,
and, — you know too much.

64

UNDER THE DEODARS

He. How do you mean?

She. That is a part of the punishment. There can-
not be perfect trust between us.

He. In Heaven's name, why not?

She. Hush! The Other Place is quite enough. Ask
yourself.

He. I don't follow.

She. You trust me so implicitly that when I look

at another man Never mind, Guy. Have you

^ver made love to a girl — a good girl?

He. Something of the sort. Centuries ago — in the
Dark Ages, before I ever met you, dear.

She. Tell me what you said to her.

He. What does a man say to a girl? I've forgotten.

She. / remember. He tells her that he trusts her
and worships the ground she walks on, and that he'll
love and honour and protect her till her dying day;
and so she marries in that belief. At least, I speak of
one girl who was not protected.

He. Well, and then?

She. And then, Guy, and then, that girl needs ten
times the love and trust and honour — yes, honour —
that was enough when she was only a mere wife if —
if — the other life she chooses to lead is to be made even
bearable. Do you understand?

He. Even bearable! It'll be Paradise.

She. Ah! Can you give me all I've asked for —
not now, nor a few months later, but when you begin
to think of what you might have done if you had kept
your own appointment and your caste here — when
you begin to look upon me as a drag and a burden? I
shall want it most, then, Guy, for there will be no one
in the wide world but you.

He. You're a little over-tired to-night, Sweetheart

THE HILL OF ILLUSION 65

and you're taking a stage view of the situation. After
the necessary business in the Courts, the road is clear
to

She. ' The holy state of matrimony ! ' Ha! ha! ha!

He. Ssh ! Don't laugh in that horrible way !

She. I — I c-c-c-can't help it! Isn't it too absurd!
Ah! Ha! ha! ha! Guy, stop me quick or I shall —
^-1-laugh till we get to the Church.

He. For goodness' sake, stop! Don't make an ex-
hibition of yourself. What is the matter with you?

She. N-nothing. I'm better now.

He. That's all right. One moment, dear. There's
a little wisp of hair got loose from behind your right
ear and it's straggling over your cheek. So!

She. Thank'oo. I'm 'fraid my hat's on one side,
too.

He. What do you wear these huge dagger bonnet-
skewers for? They're big enough to kill a man with.

She. Oh! Don't kill me, though. You're sticking
it into my head! Let we do it. You men are so clumsy.

He. Have you had many opportunities of comparing
us — in this sort of work?

She. Guy, what is my name?

He. Eh! I don't follow.

She. Here's my card-case. Can you read?

He. Yes. Well?

She. Well, that answers your question. You know
the other man's name. Am I sufficiently humbled, or
would yotf like *o ask me if there is any one else/

He. I see* w. My darling, I never meant that for
an instant. I was only joking. There 1 Lucky there's
no one on the road. They'd be scandalised.

She. They'll be more scandalised before the end.

He. Do-on't! 1 don't like you to talk in that way.

66

UNDER THE DEODARS

She. Unreasonable man! Who asked me to face the
situation and accept it? — Tell me, do I look like Mrs.
Penner? Do I look like a naughty woman! Swear I
don't! Give me your word of honour, my honourable
friend, that I'm not like Mrs. Buzgago. That's the way
she stands, with her hands clasped at the back of her
head. D'you like that?

He. Don't be affected.

She. I'm not. I'm Mrs. Buzgago. Listen!

Pendant une anne' toute entierc
Le regiment n'a pas r'paru.
Ail Ministere de la Guerre
On le r'porta comme perdu.

On se r'noncait a r'trouver sa trace,
Quand un matin subitement,
On le vit r'paraitre sur la place,
L'Colonel toujours en avant.

That's the way she rolls her r's. Ami like her?

He. No, but I object when you go on like an actress
and sing stuff of that kind. Where in the world did you
pick up the Chanson du Colonel ? It isn't a drawing-room
song. It isn't proper.

She. Mrs. Buzgago taught it me. She is both draw-
ing-room and proper, and in another month she'll shut her
drawing-room to me, and thank God she isn't as improper
as I am. Oh, Guy, Guy! I wish I was like some women
and had no scruples about — what is it Keene says? —
i Wearing a corpse's hair and being false to the bread they
eat.'

He. I am only a man of limited intelligence, and, just
now, very bewildered. When you have quite finished
flashing through all your moods tell me, and I'll try to
understand the last one.

THE HILL OF ILLUSION 67

She. Moods, Guy! I haven't any. I'm sixteen
years old and you're just twenty, and you've been waiting
for two hours outside the school in the cold. And now
I've met you, and now we're walking home together.
Does that suit you, My Imperial Majesty?

He. No. We aren't children. Why can't you be
rational?

She. He asks me that when I'm going to commit
suicide for his sake, and, and — I don't want to be French
and rave about my mother, but have I ever told you that
I have a mother, and a brother who was my pet before I
married? He's married now. Can't you imagine the
pleasure that the news of the elopement will give him?
Have you any people at Home, Guy, to be pleased with
your performances?

He. One or two. One can't make omelets without
breaking eggs.

She {slowly). I don't see the necessity

He. Hah! What do you mean?

She. Shall I speak the truth?

He. Under the circumstances, perhaps it would be as
well.

She. Guy, I'm afraid.

He. I thought we'd settled all that. What of?
She. Of you.

He. Oh, damn it all! The old business! This is too
bad!
She. Of you.
He. And what now?
Shi:. What do you think of me?

He. Beside the question altogether. What do you
intend to do?

She. 1 daren't risk it. I'm afraid. If I COIitJ only
cheat

«8 UNDER THE DEODARS

He. A la Buzgago? No, thanks. That's the one point
on which I have any notion of Honour. I won't eat his
salt and steal too. I'll loot openly or not at all.

She. I never meant anything else.

He. Then, why in the world do you pretend not to be
willing to come?

She. It's not pretence, Guy. I am afraid.

He. Please explain.

She. It can't last, Guy. It can't last. You'll get
angry, and then you'll swear, and then you'll get jealous,
and then you'll mistrust me — you do now— and you your-
self will be the best reason for doubting. And I — what
shall I do? I shall be no better than Mrs. Buzgago found
out — no better than any one. And you'll know that. Oh,
Guy, can't you see ?

He. I see that you are desperately unreasonable, little
woman.

She. There! The moment I begin to object, you get
ingry. What will you do when I am only your property
—stolen property? It can't be, Guy. It can't be! I
thought it could, but it can't. You'll get tired of me.

He. I tell you I shall not. Won't anything make
you understand that?

She. There, can't you see? If you speak to me like
that now, you'll call me horrible names later, if I don't do
everything as you like. And if you were cruel to me, Guy,
where should I go — where should I go? I can't trust you.
Oh ! I can't trust you !

He. I suppose I. ought to say that I can trust you.
I've ample reason.

She. Please don't, dear. It hurts as much as if you
hit me.

He. It isn't exactly pleasant for me.

She. I can't help it. I wish I were dead1 I can't

THE HILL OF ILLUSION

69

trust you, and I don't trust myself. Oh, Guy, let it die
away and be forgotten !

He. Too late now. I don't understand you — I won't
— and I can't trust myself to talk this evening. May I
call to-morrow?

She. Yes. No! Oh, give me time ! The day after.
I get into my 'rickshaw here and meet Him at Peliti's.
You ride.

He. I'll go on to Peliti's too. I think I want a drink.
My world's knocked about my ears and the stars are fall-
ing. Who are those brutes howling in the Old Library?

She. They're rehearsing the singing-quadrilles for the
Fancy Ball. Can't you hear Mrs. Buzgago's voice? Sh<
has a solo. It's quite a new idea. Listen !

Mrs. Buzgago {in the Old Library, con. molt. exp.).

See saw! Margery Daw!
Sold her bed to lie upon straw.
Wasn't she a silly slut
To sell her bed and lie upon dirt?

Captain Congleton, I'm going to alter that to ' flirt.' It
sounds better.

He. No, I've changed my mind about the drink.
Good-night, little lady. I shall see you to-morrow?

She. Ye — es. Good-night, Guy. Don't be angry with
me.

He. Angry! You know I trust you absolutely. Good-
night an<V God bless you 1

{Jlircc seconds later. Alone.) II mm! I'd give some-
thing to discover whether there's another man ;it the back
of all this.

A SECOND-RATE WOMAN

Estfuga, vohitur rota,

On we drift: where looms the dim port?
One Two Three Four Five contribute their quota :

Something is gained if one caught but the import,
Show it us, Hugues of Saxe-Gotha.

Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha.

'Dressed! Don't tell me that woman ever dressed ii\
her life. She stood in the middle of the room while her
ayah — no, her husband — it must have been a man — threw
her clothes at her. She then did her hair with her fingers,
and rubbed her bonnet in the flue under the bed. I know
she did, as well as if I had assisted at the orgie. Who is
she? ' said Mrs. Hauksbee.

'Don't!' said Mrs. Mallowe feebly. 'You make my
head ache. I'm miserable to-day. Stay me with fon-
dants, comfort me with chocolates, for I am Did

you bring anything from Peliti's? '

'Questions to begin with. You shall have the sweets
when you have answered them. Who and what is the
creature? There were at least half a dozen men round her,
and she appeared to be going to sleep in their midst.'

'Delville,' said Mrs. Mallowe, '"Shady" Delville, to
distinguish her from Mrs. Jim of that ilk. She dances as
untidily as she dresses, I believe, and her husband is some-
where in Madras. Go and call, if you are so interested.'

'What have I to do with Shigramitish women? She
merely caught my attention for a minute, and I wonderet

70

A SECOND-RATE WOMAN 71

at the attraction that a dowd has for a certain type of
.man. I expected to see her walk out of her clothes —
Until I looked at her eyes.'

'Hooks and eyes, surely,' drawled Mrs. Mallowe.

'Don't be clever, Polly. You make my head ache.
And round this hayrick stood a crowd of men — a positive
crowd ! '

' Perhaps they also expected '

' Polly, don't be Rabelaisian ! '

Mrs. Mallowe curled herself up comfortably on the sofa,
and turned her attention to the sweets. She and Mrs.
Hauksbee shared the same house at Simla; and these
things befell two seasons after the matter of Otis Yeere,
Which has been already recorded.

Mrs. Hauksbee stepped into the veranda and
iooked down upon the Mall, her forehead puckered with
thought.

' Hah ! ' said Mrs. Hauksbee shortly. ' Indeed ! '
'What is it? ' said Mrs. Mallowe sleepily.
'That dowd and The Dancing Master — to whom I
object.'

'Why to The Dancing Master? He is a middle-aged
gentleman, of reprobate and romantic tendencies, and
tries to be a friend of mine.'

'Then make up your mind to lose him. Dowds cling
by nature, and I should imagine that this animal — how
terrible her bonnet looks from above! — is specially cling-
some.'

'She is welcome to The Dancing Master so far as I am
concerned. I never could take an Interest in a monoto-
nous liar. The frustrated aim of his life is to persuade
people that he is a bachelor.'

'O-oh! I think I've met that sort of man before.
And isn't he?'

?2

UNDER THE DEODARS

' No. He confided that to me a few days ago. Ugh!
Some men ought to be killed.'
' What happened then? '

'He posed as the horror of horrors — a misunderstood
man. Heaven knows the femme incomprise is sad enough
and bad enough — but the other thing! '

'And so fat too! I should have laughed in his face.
Men seldom confide in me. How is it they come to you? '

' For the sake of impressing me with their careers in the
past. Protect me from men with confidences ! '

'And yet you encourage them?'

'What can I do? They talk, I listen, and they vow
that I am sympathetic. I know I always profess astonish-
ment even when the plot is — of the most old possible.'

'Yes. Men are so unblushingly explicit if they are
once allowed to talk, whereas women's confidences are
full of reservations and fibs, except '

.'When they go mad and babble of the Unutterabili-
ties after a week's acquaintance. Really, if you come
to consider, we- know a great deal more of men than of
our own sex.'

'And the extraordinary thing is that men will never
believe it. They say we are trying to hide something. '

'They are generally doing that on their own account.
Alas! These chocolates pall upon me, and I haven't
eaten more than a dozen. I think I shall go to sleep.'

'Then you'll get fat, dear. If you took more exer-
cise and a- more intelligent interest in your, neighbours
you would '

'Be as much loved as Mrs. Hauksbee. You're a
darling in many ways and I like you — you are not a
woman's woman — but why do you trouble yourself
about mere human beings? '

'Because in the absence of angels, who I am sure

A SECOND-RATE WOMAN

IS

would be horribly dull, men and women are the most
fascinating things in the whole wide world, lazy one.
I am interested in The Dowd — I am interested in The
Dancing Master — I am interested in the Hawley Boy —
and I am interested in you.'

'Why couple me with the Hawley Boy? He is your
property.'

'Yes, and in his own guileless speech, I'm making a
good thing out of him. When he is slightly more re-
formed, and has passed his Higher Standard, or whatever
the authorities think fit to exact from him, I shall select
a pretty little girl, the Holt girl, I think, and'— here she
waved her hands airily — '"whom Mrs. Hauksbee hath
joined together let no man put asunder." That's all.'

'And when you have yoked May Holt with the most
notorious detrimental in Simla, and earned the undying
hatred of Mamma Holt, what will you do with me, Dis-
penser of the Destinies of the Universe? '

Mrs. Hauksbee dropped into a low chair in front of
the fire, and, chin in hand, gazed long and steadfastly at
Mrs. Mallowe.

'I do not know,' she said, shaking her head, 'what I
shall do with you, dear. It's obviously impossible to
marry you to some one else — your husband would
object and the experiment might not be successful
after all. I think I shall begin by preventing you from —
what is it?— "sleeping on ale-house benches and snoring
in the sun."'

'Don't!' I don't like your quotations. They are so
rude.' Goto the Library and bring me new books.'

'While you sleep? No I If you don't come with me,
I shall spread your newest frock on my Y/Wv\s7/</7i'-bow,
and when any one asks me what I am doing, I shall say
that I am going to Phelps's to get it let out. 1 shall

1

74

UNDER THE DEODARS

take care that Mrs. MacNamara sees me. Put your
things on, there's a good girl.'

Mrs. Mallowe groaned and obeyed, and the two went
off to the Library, where they found Mrs. Delville and the
man who went by the nickname of The Dancing Master.
By that time Mrs. Mallowe was awake and eloquent.

' That is the Creature!' said Mrs. Hauksbee, with the
air of one pointing out a slug in the road.

'No,' said Mrs. Mallowe. 'The man is the Creature.
Ugh! Good-evening, Mr. Bent. I thought you were
coming to tea this evening.'

'Surely it was for to-morrow, was it not?' answered
The Dancing Master. 'I understood ... I fan-
cied . . . I'm so sorry . . . How very unfor*
tunate!' . . .

But Mrs. Mallowe had passed on.

'For the practised equivocator you said he was,'
murmured Mrs. Hauksbee, 'he strikes me as a failure.
Now wherefore should he have preferred a walk with
The Dowd to tea with us? Elective affinities, I sup-
pose— both grubby. Polly, I'd never forgive that woman
as long as the world rolls.'

'I forgive every woman everything,' said Mrs. Mal-
lowe. 'He will be a sufficient punishment for her.
What a common voice she has ! '

Mrs. Delville's voice was not pretty, her carriage
was even less lovely, and her raiment was strikingly
neglected. All these things Mrs. Mallowe noticed over
the top of a magazine.

'Now what is there in her?' said Mrs. Hauksbee.
'Do you see what I meant about the clothes falling
off? If I were a man I would perish sooner than be
seen with that rag-bag. And yet, she has good eyes,
but— Oh!'

A SECOND-RATE WOMAN

75

'What is it?'

' She doesn't know how to use them ! On my Honour,
she does not. Look! Oh look! Untidiness I can en-
dure, but ignorance never! The woman's a fool.'

'Hsh! She'U hear you.'

'All the women in Simla are fools. She'll think I
mean some one else. Now she's going out. What
a thoroughly objectionable couple she and The Dancing
Master make! Which reminds me. Do you suppose
they'll ever dance together? '

'Wait and see. I don't envy her the conversation
of The Dancing Master — loathly man! His wife ought
to be up here before long.'

'Do you know anything about him?,

'Only what he told me. It may be all a fiction.
He married a girl bred in the country, I think, and,
being an honourable, chivalrous soul, told me that he
repented his bargain and sent her to her mother as often
as possible — a person who has lived in the Doon since
the memory of man and goes to Mussoorie when other
people go Home. The wife is with her at present. So
he says.'

'Babies?'

'One only, but he talks of his wife in a revolting
way. I hated him for it. He thought he was being
epigrammatic and brilliant.'

'That is a vice peculiar to men. I dislike him because
he is generally in the wake of sonic girl, disappointing
the EligiJ)les. He will persecute May Holt no more,
unless I ajn much mistaken.1

'No. I think Mrs. Delville may occupy his attention
for a while'

'Do you suppose she knows that he is the head of a
family? '

76

UNDER THE DEODARS

'Not from his lips. He swore me to eternal secrecy.
Wherefore I tell you. Don't you know that type of
man?'

'Not intimately, thank goodness! As a general
rule, when a man begins to abuse his wife to me, I find
that the Lord gives me wherewith to answer him accord-
ing to his folly; and we part with a coolness between us.
I laugh/

'I'm different. I've no sense of humour.'

'Cultivate it, then. It has been my mainstay for
more years than I care to think about. A well-educated
sense of Humour will save a woman when Religion,
Training, and Home influences fail; and we may all need
salvation sometimes.'

'Do you suppose that the Delville woman has humour? '

'Her dress bewrays her. How can a Thing who wears
her supplement under her left arm have any notion of the
fitness of things — much less their folly? If she discards
The Dancing Master after having once seen him dance,
I may respect her. Otherwise '

' But are we not both assuming a great deal too much,
dear? You saw the woman at Peliti's — half an hour
later you saw her walking with The Dancing Master
— an hour later you met her here at the Library.'

'Still with The Dancing Master, remember.'

'Still with The Dancing Master, I admit, but why on
the strength of that should you imagine '

'I imagine nothing. I have no imagination. I am
only convinced that The Dancing Master is attracted
to The Dowd because he is objectionable in every way
and she in every other. If I know the man as you have
described him, he holds his wife in slavery at present.'

'She is twenty years younger than he.'

'Poor wretch! And, in the end, after he has posed

A SECOND-RATE WOMAN 77

and swaggered and lied — he has a mouth under that
ragged moustache simply made for lies — he will be
rewarded according to his merits.'

'I wonder what those really are/ said Mrs. Mallowe.

But Mrs. Hauksbee, her face close to the shelf of the
new books, was humming softly: 'What shall he have
who killed the DeerV She was a lady of unfettered
speech.

One month later, she announced her intention of call-
ing upon Mrs. Delville. Both Mrs. Hauksbee and Mrs.
Mallowe were in morning wrappers, and there was a
great peace in the land.

'I should go as I was,' said Mrs. Mallowe. 'It would
be a delicate compliment to her style.'

Mrs. Hauksbee studied herself in the glass.

'Assuming for a moment that she ever darkened these
doors, I should put on this robe, after all the others, to
ohow her what a morning wrapper ought to be. It
might enliven her. As it is, I shall go in the dove-
coloured — sweet emblem of youth and innocence — and
shall put on my new gloves.'

'If you really are going, dirty tan would be too
good; and you know that dove-colour spots with the
rain.'

'I care not. I may make her envious. At least I
shall try, though one cannot expect very much from a
woman who puts a lace tucker into her habit.'

'Just Heavens! When did she do that?'

'Yesteirlay riding with The Dancing Master. I met
them at the back of Jakko, and the rain had made the
lace lie down. To complete the effect, she was wear-
ing an unclean tcrni with the elastic under her chin. I
felt almost too well content to lake the trouble to despise
her.'

UNDER THE DEODARS

'The Hawley Boy was riding with you. What did
he think?'

'Does a boy ever notice these things? Should I like
him if he did? He stared in the rudest way, and just
when I thought he had seen the elastic, he said, "There's
something very taking about that face." I rebuked him
on the spot. I aon't approve of boys being taken by
faces.'

'Other than your own. I shouldn't be in the least sur-
prised if the Hawley Boy immediately went to call.'

'I forbade him. Let her be satisfied with The Danc-
ing Master, and his wife when she comes up. I'm
rather curious to see Mrs. Bent and the Delville woman
together.'

Mrs. Hauksbee departed and, at the end of an hour,
returned slightly flushed.

'There is no limit to the treachery of youth! I
ordered the Hawley Boy, as he valued my patronage,
not to call. The first person I stumble over — literally
stumble over— in her poky, dark, little drawing-room
is, of course, the Hawley Boy. She kept us waiting
ten minutes, and then emerged as though she had been
tipped out of the dirty-clothes basket. You know my
way, dear, when I am at all put out. I was Superior,
crrrrushingly Superior! 'Lifted my eyes to Heaven,
and had heard of nothing — 'dropped my eyes on the
carpet and "really didn't know" — 'played with my
card-case and "supposed so." The Hawley Boy gig-
gled like a girl, and I had to freeze him with scowls be-
tween the sentences.'

'And she?'

'She sat in a heap on the edge of a couch, and man-
aged to convey the impression that she was suffering
from stomach-ache j at the very least. It was all I

A SECOND-RATE WOMAN 79

could do not to ask after her symptoms. When I rose,
she grunted just like a buffalo in the water — too lazy
to move.'

'Are you certain? '

'Am I blind, Polly? Laziness, sheer laziness, noth-
ing else — or her garments were only constructed for
sitting dotvn in. I stayed for a quarter of an hour
trying to penetrate the gloom, to guess what her sur-
roundings were like, while she stuck out her tongue.'

'Lu— cyV

'Well— I'll withdraw the tongue, though I'm sure if she
didn't do it when I was in the room, she did the minute I
vas outside. At any rate, she lay in a lump and grunted.
Ask the Hawley Boy, dear. I believe the grunts were
meant for sentences, but she spoke so indistinctly that I
can't swear to it.'

'' You are incorrigible, simply/

' I am not I Treat me civilly, give me peace with honour,
don't put the only available seat facing the window, and a
child may eat jam in my lap before Church. But I resent
being grunted at. Wouldn't you? Do you suppose that
she communicates her views on life and love to The Danc-
ing Master in a set of modulated " Grmphs? " '

'You attach too much importance to The Dancing
Master.'

'He came as we went, and The Dowd grew almost
cordial at the sight of him. He smiled greasily, and moved
about that darkened dog kennel in a suspiciously familiar
way.' *

'Don't be uncharitable'. Any sin but that I'll for-
give.'

'Listen to the voice of History. I am only desc ribing
what I saw. He entered, the heap on the sofa revived
slightly, and the Hawley Hoy and 1 came away together.

UNDER THE DEODARS

He is disillusioned, but I felt it my duty to lecture him
severely for going there. And that's all.'

'Now for Pity's sake leave the wretched creature and
The Dancing Master alone. They never did you any
harm.'

'No harm? To dress as an example and a stumbling-
block for half Simla, and then to find this Person who is
dressed by the hand of God — not that I wish to disparage
Him for a moment, but you know the tikka dhurzie way He
attires those lilies of the field — this Person draws the eyes
of men — and some of them nice men? It's almost enough
to make one discard clothing. I told the Hawley Boy so.'

'And what did that sweet youth do? '

' Turned shell-pink and looked -across the far blue hills
like a distressed cherub. Ami talking wildly, Polly? Let
me say my say, and I shall be calm. Otherwise I may go
abroad and disturb Simla with a few original reflections.
Excepting always your own sweet self, there isn't a single
woman in the land who understands me when I am —
what's the word? '

'Tete-felee,' suggested Mrs. Mallowe.

1 Exactly ! And now let us have tiffin. The demands of

Society are exhausting, and as Mrs. Delville says :

Here Mrs. Hauksbee, to the horror of the khitmatgars>
lapsed into a series of grunts, while Mrs. Mallowe stared
in lazy surprise.

'"God gie us a gude conceit of oorselves,"' said Mrs.
Hauksbee piously, returning to her natural speech.
' Now, in any other woman that would have been vulgar.
I am consumed with curiosity to see Mrs. Bent. I ex-
pect complications.'

'Woman of one idea,' said Mrs. Mallowe shortly; 'all
complications are as old as the hills ! I have lived through
or near all — all — all I '

A SECOND-RATE WOMAN 81

'And yet do not understand that men and women
*:cver behave twice alike. I am old who was young — if
ever I put my head in your lap, you dear, big sceptic, you
will learn that my parting is gauze — but never, no never,
have I lost my interest in men and women. Polly, I shall
see this business out to the bitter end.'

'I am going to sleep,' said Mrs. Mallowe calmly. 'I
never interfere with men or women unless I am com-
pelled,' and she retired with dignity to her own room.

Mrs. Hauksbee's curiosity was not long left ungratified,
for Mrs. Bent came up to Simla a few days after the con-
versation faithfully reported above, and pervaded the
Mall by her husband's side

'Behold!' said Mrs. Hauksbee, thoughtfully rubbing
her nose. ' That is the last link of the chain, if we omit the
husband of the Delville, whoever he may be. Let me con-
sider. The Bents and the Delvilles inhabit the same
hotel; and the Delville is detested by the Waddy — do you
know the Waddy? — who is almost as big a dowd. The
Waddy also abominates the male Bent, for which, if her
other sins do not weigh too heavily, she will eventually go
to Heaven.'

'Don't be irreverent,' said Mrs. Mallowe, 'I like Mrs.
Bent's face.'

'I am discussing the Waddy,' returned Mrs. Hauksbee
loftily. ' The Waddy will take the female Bent apart, after
having borrowed — yes! — everything that she can, from
hairpins to babies' bottles. Such, my dear, is life in a
hotel. The Waddy will teU the female Bent facts and
fictions about The Dancing Maste r and The Dowd.'

'Lucy, I should like you better it you were not always
looking into people's back-bedrooms.'

'Anybody can look into their front drawing-rooms; and
remember whatever I do, and whatever 1 look, I never

82

UNDER THE DEODARS

talk — as the Waddy will. Let us hope that The Dancing
Master's greasy smile and manner of the pedagogue will
soften the heart of that cow, his wife. If mouths speak
truth, I should think that little Mrs. Bent could get very
angry on occasion.'

' But what reason has she for being angry? '

4 What reason! The Dancing Master in himself is a
reason. How does it go? "If in his life some trivial
errors fall, Look in his face and you'll believe them all." I
am prepared to credit any evil of The Dancing Master,
because I hate him so. And The Dowd is so disgustingly
badly dressed '

'That she, too, is capable of every iniquity? I always
prefer to believe the best of everybody. It saves so much
trouble.'

1 Very good. I prefer to believe the worst. It saves use-
less expenditure of sympathy. And you may be quite
certain that the Waddy believes with me.'

Mrs. Mallowe sighed and made no answer.

The conversation was holden after dinner while Mrs.
Hauksbee was dressing for a dance.

'I am too tired to go,' pleaded Mrs. Mallowe, and Mrs.
Hauksbee left her in peace till two in the morning, when
she was aware of emphatic knocking at her door.

' Don't be very angry, dear,' said Mrs. Hauksbee. 1 My
idiot of an ayah has gone home, and, as I hope to sleep to-
night, there isn't a soul in the place to unlace me.'

' Oh, this is too bad ! ' said Mrs. Mallowe sulkily.

' 'Can't help it. I'm a lone, lorn grass-widow, dear, but
I will not sleep in my stays. And such news too ! Oh, do
unlace me, there's a darling! The Dowd — The Dancing
Master — I and the Hawley Boy — You know the North
veranda? '

'How can I do anything if you spin round like this?'

A SECOND-RATE WOMAN

83

protested Mrs. Mallowe, fumbling with the knot of the
laces.

'Oh, I forget. I must tell my tale without the aid of
vour eyes. Do you know you've lovely eyes, dear? Well,
to begin with, I took the Hawley Boy to a kala juggah.'

' Did he want much taking? '

'Lots! There was an arrangement of loose-boxes in
kanats, and she was in the next one talking to him'
'Which? How? Explain.'

'You know what I mean — The Dowd and The Dancing
Master. We could hear every word, and we listened
shamelessly — 'specially the Hawley Boy. Polly, I quite
love that woman ! '

' This is interesting. There! Now turn round. What
happened?'

'One moment. Ah — h! Blessed relief. I've been look-
ing forward to taking them off for the last half-hour—
which is ominous at my time of life. But, as I was saying,
we listened and heard The Dowd drawl worse than ever.
.She drops her final g's like a barmaid or a blue-blooded
Aide-de-Camp. "Look he-ere, you're gettin' too fond <>'
me," she said, and The Dancing Master owned it was so
in language that nearly made me ill. The Dowd reflected
for a while. Then we heard her say, " Look he-ere, Mister
Bent, why are you such an aw-ful liar?" I nearly ex-
ploded while The Dancing Master denied the charge. 1 1
seems that he never told her he was a married man.'

'I said he wouldn't.'

'And she. had taken this to heart, on personal grounds,
I suppose. She drawled along for live minutes, reproach-
ing him with his perfidy and grew quite motherly. "Now
you've got a nice little wife of your own you have," she
said. "She's ten times too good for a fat old man like you,
and, look he-ere, you never told me a word about her, and

<$4

UNDER THE DEODARS

I've been thinkin' about it a good deal, and I think you're
a liar." Wasn't that delicious? The Dancing Master
maundered and raved till the Hawley Boy suggested that
he should burst in and beat him. His voice runs up into
an impassioned squeak when he is afraid. The Dowd
must be an extraordinary woman. She explained that
had he been a bachelor she might not have objected to his
devotion; but since he was a married man and the father
of a very nice baby, she considered him a hypocrite, and
this she repeated twice. She wound up her drawl with :
"An' I'm tellin' you this because your wife is angry with
me, an' I hate quarrellin' with any other woman, an' I
like your wife. You know how you have behaved for the
last six weeks. You shouldn't have done it, indeed you
shouldn't. You're too old an' too fat." Can't you im-
agine how The Dancing Master would wince at that!
"Now go away," she said. "I don't want to tell you
what I think of you, because I think you are not nice. I'll
stay he-ere till the next dance begins." Did you think
that the creature had so much in her? '

'I never studied her as closely as you did. It sounds
unnatural. What happened? '

'The Dancing Master attempted blandishment, re-
proof, jocularity, and the style of the Lord High Warden,
and I had almost to pinch the Hawley Boy to make him
keep quiet. She grunted at the end of each sentence and,
in the end, he went away swearing to himself, quite like a
man in a novel. He looked more objectionable than ever.
I laughed. I love that woman — in spite of her clothes.
And now I'm going to bed. What do you think of it? '

'I shan't begin to think till the morning,' said Mrs.
Mallowe yawning. 'Perhaps she spoke the truth. They
do fly into it by accident sometimes.'

Mrs, Hauksbee's account of her eavesdropping was an

A SECOND-RATE WOMAN 85

ornate one but truthful in the main. For reasons best
known to herself, Mrs. 'Shady' Delville had turned upon
Mr. Bent and rent him limb from limb, casting him away
limp and disconcerted ere she withdrew the light of her
eyes from him permanently. Being a man of resource,
and anything but pleased in that he had been called both
old and fat, he gave Mrs. Bent to understand that he had,
during her absence in the Doon, been the victim of un-
ceasing persecution at the hands of Mrs. Delville, and he
told the tale so often and with such eloquence that he
ended in believing it, while his wife marvelled at the
manners and customs of 'some women.' When the situ-
ation showed signs of languishing, Mrs. Waddy was
always on hand to wake the smouldering fires of suspicion
in Mrs. Bent's bosom and to contribute generally to the
peace and comfort of the hotel. Mr. Bent's life was not a
happy one, for if Mrs. Waddy's story were true, he was,
argued his wife, untrustworthy to the last degree. If his
own statement were true, his charms of manner and con-
versation were so great that he needed constant sur-
veillance. And he received it, till lie repented genuinely
of his marriage and neglected his personal appearance.
Mrs. Delville alone in the hotel was unchanged. She re-
moved her chair some six paces towards the head of the
table, and occasionally in the twilight ventured <>n timid
overtures of friendship to Mrs. Bent, which were repulsed.

'She does it for my sake,' hinted the virtuous Bent.

'A dangerous and designing woman,' purred Mrs.
Waddy.

Worst of all, every other hotel in Simla was lull !

w

3§f *(C ]fc 3fc 3(C )fC sf( 3^C

'Polly, are you afraid of diphtheria? '

'Of nothing in the world except « \uatlpox. Diph-

86

UNDER THE DEODARS

theria kills,, but it doesn't disfigure. Why do you

ask? '

'Because the Bent baby has got it, and the whole
hotel is upside down in consequence. The Waddy has
"set her five young on the rail" and fled. The Danc-
ing Master fears for his precious throat, and that miser-
able little woman, his wife, has no notion of what ought
to be done. She wanted to put it into a mustard bath
— for croup!'

'Where did you learn all this?'

'Just now, on the Mall. Dr. Howlen told me. The
Manager of the hotel is abusing the Bents, and the
Bents are abusing the manager. They are a feckless
couple.'

'Well. What's on your mind?'

'This; and I know it's a grave thing to ask. Would
you seriously object to my bringing the child over here,
with its mother?'

' On the most strict understanding that we see nothing
of The Dancing Master.'

'He will be only too glad to stay away. Polly, you're
an angel. The woman really is at her wits' end.'

'And you know nothing about her, careless, and
would hold her up to public scorn if it gave .you a min-
ute's amusement. Therefore you risk your life for the
sake of her brat. No, Loo, Vm not the angel. I shall
keep to my rooms and avoid her. But do as you please
— only tell me why you do it.'

Mrs. Hauksbee's eyes softened; she looked out of the
window and back into Mrs. Mallowe's face.

'I don't know,' said Mrs. Hauksbee simply.

'You dear!'

'Polly! — and for aught you knew you might have
taken my fringe off. Never do that again without

A SECOND-RATE WOMAN 87

warning. Now we'll get the rooms ready. I don't
suppose I shall be allowed to circulate in society for a
month.'

'And I also. Thank goodness I shall at last get all
the sleep I want.'

Much to Mrs. Bent's surprise she and the baby were
brought over to the house almost before she knew where
she was. Bent was devoutly and undisguisedly thank-
ful, for he was afraid of the infection, and also hoped
that a few weeks in the hotel alone with Mrs. Delville
might lead to explanations. Mrs. Bent had thrown
her jealousy to the winds in her fear for her child's
life.

'We can give you good milk,' said Mrs. Hauksbee to
her, 'and our house is much nearer to the Doctor's than
the hotel, and you won't feel as though you were living
in a hostile camp. Where is the dear Mrs. Waddy?
She seemed to be a particular friend of yours.'

'They've all left me,' said Mrs. Bent bitterly. 'Mrs.
Waddy went first. She said I ought to be ashamed of
myself for introducing diseases there, and I am sure it
wasn't my fault that little Dora '

'How nice!' cooed Mrs. Hauksbee. 'The Waddy
is an infectious disease herself —"more quickly caught
than the plague and the taker runs presently mad." I
lived next door to her at the Elysium, three years ago.
Now see, you won't give us the least t rouble, and I've
ornamented all the house with sheets soaked in carbolic.
It smells comforting, doesn't it? Remember I'm always
in call, and" my ayah's at your service when yours goes
to her meals and— and if you cry I'll never forgive
you.'

Dora Bent occupied her mother's unprofitable at ten
tion through the day and the night. The Doctor

88 UNDER THE DEODARS

called thrice in the twenty-four hours, and the house
reeked with the smell of the Condy's Fluid, chlorine-
water, and carbolic acid washes. Mrs. Mallowe kept
to her own rooms — she considered that she had made
sufficient concessions in the cause of humanity — and
Mrs. Hauksbee was more esteemed by the Doctor as a
help in the sick-room than the half-distraught mother.

'I know nothing of illness,' said Mrs. Hauksbee to
the Doctor. 'Only tell me what to do, and I'll do it.'

'Keep that crazy woman from kissing the child, and
let her have as little to do with the nursing as you pos-
sibly can,' said the Doctor; ' I'd turn her out of the
sick-room, but that I honestly believe she'd die of anx-
iety. She is less than no good, and I depend on you
and the ayahs, remember.'

Mrs. Hauksbee accepted the responsibility, though it
painted olive hollows under her eyes and forced her to
her oldest dresses. Mrs. Bent clung to her with more
than childlike faith.

'I know you'll make Dora well, won't you?' she
said at least twenty times a day; and twenty times a
day Mrs. Hauksbee answered valiantly, 'Of course I
will.'

But Dora did not improve, and the Doctor seemed tc
be always in the house.

'There's some danger of the thing taking a bad turn,'
he said; 'I'll come over between three and four in the
morning • to-morrow. '

'Good gracious]' said Mrs. Hauksbee. 'He never
told me what the turn would be! My education has
been horribly neglected; and I have only th'^ foolish
mother- woman to fall back upon.'

The night wore through slowly, and Mrs. Hauksbee
dozed in a chair by the fire. There was a dance at the

A SECOND-RATE WOMAN

89

Viceregal Lodge, and she dreamed of it till she was
aware of Mrs. Bent's anxious eyes staring into her own.

'Wake up! Wake up! Do something!' cried Mrs.
Bent piteously. 'Dora's choking to death! Do you
mean to let her die? '

Mrs. Hauksbee jumped to her feet and bent over the
bed. The child was righting for breath, while the
mother wrung her hands despairing.

'Oh, what can I do? What can you do? She won't
stay still! I can't hold her. Why didn't the Doctor
say this was coming?' screamed Mrs. Bent. iWonH
you help me? She's dying!'

'I — I've never seen a child die before!' stammerec
Mrs. Hauksbee feebly, and then — let none blame her
weakness after the strain of long watching — she broke
down, and covered her face with her hands. The
ayahs on the threshold snored peacefully.

There was a rattle of 'rickshaw wheels below, the .
clash of an opening door, a heavy step on the stairs,
and Mrs. Delville entered to find Mrs. Bent screaming
for the Doctor as she ran round the room. Mrs. Hauks-
bee, her hands to her ears, and her face buried in the
chintz of a chair, was quivering with pain at each
cry from the bed, and murmuring, 'Thank God, I
never bore a child! Oh! thank God, I never bore a
child!'

Mrs. Delville looked at the bed for an instant, took
Mrs. Bent by the shoulders, and said quietly, 'Get me
some caustig. Be quick.'

The, mother obeyed mechanically. Mrs. Delville had
thrown herself down by the side of the child and was
opening its mouth.

'Oh, you're killing her!' cried Mrs. Bent. 'Where's
the Doctor? Leave her alone!'

go

UNDER THE DEODARS

Mrs. Delville made no reply for a minute, but busied
herself with the child.

' Now the caustic, and hold a lamp behind my shoulder.
Will you do as you are told? The acid-bottle, if you
don't know what I mean/ she said.

A second time Mrs. Delville bent over the child.
Mrs. Hauksbee, her face still hidden, sobbed and shiv-
ered. One of the ayahs staggered sleepily into the room,
yawning: ' Doctor Sahib come.'

Mrs. Delville turned her head.

' You're only just in time,' she said. 'It was chokinr
her when I came an' I've burnt it.'

' There was no sign of the membrane getting to the.
air-passages after the last steaming. It was the gen-
eral weakness, I feared,' said the Doctor half to him-
self, and he whispered as he looked, ' You've done
what I should have been afraid to do without consults -
tion.'

'She was dyin',' said Mrs. Delville, under her breath,
'Can you do any thin'? What a mercy it was I went
to the dance!'

Mrs. Hauksbee raised her head.

'Is it all over?' she gasped. 'I'm useless — I'm worse
than useless! What are you doing here?'

She stared at Mrs. Delville, and Mrs. Bent, realising
for the first time who was the Goddess from the Machine,
stared also.

Then Mrs. Delville made explanation, putting on a
dirty long glove and smoothing a crumpled and ill-
fitting ball-dress.

'I was at the dance, an' the Doctor was tellin' me
about your baby bein' so ill. So I came away early,
an' your door was open, an' I — I — lost my boy this
way six months ago, an' I've been tryin' to forget it ever

A SECOND-RATE WOMAN 91

since, an' I — I — I am very sorry for intrudin' an' any-
thin' that has happened.'

Mrs. Bent was putting out the Doctor's eye with a
lamp as he stooped over Dora.

'Take it away/ said the Doctor. 'I think the child
will do, thanks to you, Mrs. Delville. / should have
come too late, but, I assure you' — he was addressing
himself to Mrs. Delville — 'I had not the faintest reason
to expect this. The membrane must have grown like a
mushroom. Will one of you help me, please?'

He had reason for the last sentence. Mrs. Hauksbee
had thrown herself into Mrs. Delville's arms, where she
was weeping bitterly, and Mrs. Bent was unpicturesquely
mixed up with both, while from the tangle came the
sound of many sobs and much promiscuous kissing.

'Good gracious! I've spoilt all your beautiful roses!'
said Mrs. Hauksbee, lifting her head from the lump of
crushed gum and calico atrocities on Mrs. Delville's
shoulder and hurrying to the Doctor.

Mrs. Delville picked up her shawl, and slouched out
of the room, mopping her eyes with the glove that she
had not put on.

'I always said she was more than a woman,' sobbed
Mrs. Hauksbee hysterically, 'and that proves it!'

Six weeks later, Mrs. Bent and Dora had returned
to the hotel. Mrs. Hauksbee had conn- out of the
Valley of'Humiliation, had ceased to reproach herself
for her collapse in an hour of need, and was even be-
ginning to direct the affairs of the world as before.

'So nobody died, and every tiling went off as it should,
and I kissed The Dowd, Tolly. I feel so old. Does
it show in my face?'

92

UNDER THE DEODARS

'Kisses don't as a rule, do they? Of course you
know what the result of The Dowd's providential arrival
has been.'

'They ought to build her a statue — only no sculptor
dare copy those skirts.'

'Ah!' said Mrs. Mallowe quietly. 'She has found
another reward. The Dancing Master has been smirk-
ing through Simla, giving every one to understand that
she came because of her undying love for him — for him —
to save his child, and all Simla naturally believes this.'

'But Mrs. Bent '

'Mrs. Bent believes it more than any one else. She
won't speak to The Dowd now. Isn't The Dancing
Master an angel?'

Mrs. Hauksbee lifted up her voice and raged till bed-
time. The doors of the two rooms stood open.

'Polly,' said a voice from the darkness, 'what did
that American-heiress-globe-trotter girl say last season
when she was tipped out of her 'rickshaw turning a
corner? Some absurd adjective that made the man
who picked her up explode.'

'"Paltry,"' said Mrs. Mallowe. 'Through her nose
—like this— "Ha-ow pahltry!'"

'Exactly,' said the voice. ' Ha-ow pahltry it all is!'

'Which?'

'Everything. Babies, Diphtheria, Mrs. Bent and
The Dancing Master, I whooping in a chair, and The
Dowd dropping in from the clouds. I wonder what
the motive was — all the motives.'

'Urn!'

'What do you think?'
'Don't ask me. Go to sleep.'

ONLY A SUBALTERN

. . . Not only to enforce by command but to encourage by example
the energetic discharge of duty and the steady endurance of the diffi-
culties and privations inseparable from Military Service. — Bengal
Army Regulations.

They made Bobby Wick pass an examination at SancL
hurst. He was a gentleman before he was gazetted, so,
when the Empress announced that ' Gentleman-Cadet
Robert Hanna Wick ' was posted as Second Lieutenant to
the Tyneside Tail Twisters at Krab Bokhar, he became
an officer and sl gentleman, which is an enviable thing;
and there was joy in the house of Wick where Mamma
Wick and all the little Wicks fell upon their knees and
offered incense to Bobby by virtue of his achievements.

Papa Wick had been a Commissioner in his day, hold-
ing authority over three millions of men in the Chota-
Buldana Division, building great works for the good of
the land, and doing his best to make two blades of grass
grow where there was but one before. Of course, nobody
knew anything about this in the little English village
where he was just 'old Mr. Wick' and had forgotten that
he was a Companion of the ( )rder of the Star of India.

He patted Bobby on the shoulder and said: 1 Well done,
my boy!'"

There followed, while the uniform was being prepared,
an interval of pure delight, during which Hobby took
brevet-rank as a 'man' at the women-swamped tennis-
parties and tea-lights of the village, and, I daresay, had his

93

94

UNDER THE DEODARS

joining-time been extended, would have fallen in love with
several girls at once. Little country villages at Home are
very full of nice girls, because all the young men come out
to India to make their fortunes.

'India,' said Papa Wick, 'is the place. I've had thirty
years of it and, begad, I'd like to go back again. When
you join the Tail Twisters you'll be among friends, if
every one hasn't forgotten Wick of Chota-Buldana, and a
lot of people will be kind to you for our sakes. The mother
will tell you more about outfit than I can, but remember
this. Stick to your Regiment, Bobby — stick to your
Regiment. You'll see men all round you going into the
Staff Corps, and doing every possible sort of duty but
regimental, and you may be tempted to follow suit. Now
so long as you keep within your allowance, and I haven't
stinted you there, stick to the Line, the whole Line and
nothing but the Line. Be careful how you back another
young fool's bill, and if you fall in love with a woman
twenty years older than yourself, don't tell me about it,
that's all.'

With these counsels, and many others equally valu-
able, did Papa Wick fortify Bobby ere that last awful night
at Portsmouth when the Officers' Quarters held more
inmates than were provided for by the Regulations, and
the liberty-men of the ships fell foul of the drafts for
India, and the battle raged from the Dockyard Gates
even to the slums of Longport, while the drabs of Fratton
came down and scratched the faces of the Queen's Officers.

Bobby Wick, with an ugly bruise on his freckled nose, a
sick and shaky detachment to manoeuvre inship and the
comfort of fifty ' scornful females to attend to, had no
time to feel homesick till the Malabar reached mid-
Channel, when he doubled his emotions with a little
guard-visiting and a great many other matters.

ONLY A SUBALTERN 95

The Tail Twisters were a most particular Regiment.
Those who knew them least said that they were eaten up
with 'side.' But their reserve and their internal arrange-
ments generally were merely protective diplomacy. Some
five years before, the Colonel commanding had looked
into the fourteen fearless eyes of seven plump and juicy
subalterns who had all applied to enter the Staff Corps,
and had asked them why the three stars should he,
a colonel of the Line, command a dashed nursery for
double-dashed bottle-suckers who put on condemned tin
spurs and rode qualified mokes at the hiatused heads of
forsaken Black Regiments. He was a rude man and a
terrible. Wherefore the remnant took measures [with the
half-butt as an engine of public opinion] till the rumour
went abroad that young men who used the Tail Twisters
as a crutch to the Staff Corps, had many and varied trials
to endure. However, a regiment had just as much right
to its own secrets as a woman.

When Bobby came up from Deolali and took his place
among the Tail Twisters, it was gently but firmly borne
in upon him that the Regiment was his father and his
mother and his indissolubly wedded wife, and that there
was no crime under the canopy of heaven blacker than I hal
of bringing shame on the Regiment, which was the best-
shooting, best-drilled, best set-up, bravest, most illustri-
ous, and in all respects most desirable Regiment within the
compass of the Seven Seas. He was taught the legends of
the Mess Plate, from the great grinning ( iolden ( k)ds that
had come out of the Summer Palace in IVkin to the silver-
mounted markhor-horn snuff-mull presented by the last
C. (). [he who spake to the seven subalterns). And every
one of those legends told him of battles fought at long
odds, without fear as without support; of hospitality
catholic as an Arab's; of friendships deep as the sea and

96

UNDER THE DEODARS

steady as the fighting-line; of honour won b)^ hard roads
for honour's sake; and of instant and unquestioning de-
votion to the Regiment — the Regiment that claims the
lives of all and lives for ever.

More than once, too, he came officially into contact
with the Regimental colours, which looked like the lining
of a bricklayer's hat on the end of a chewed stick. Bobby
did not kneel and worship them, because British sub-
alterns are not constructed in that manner. Indeed, he
condemned them for their weight at the very moment
that they were filling with awe and other more noble
sentiments.

But best of all was the occasion when he moved with
the Tail Twisters in review order at the breaking of a
November day. Allowing for duty-men and sick, the
Regiment was one thousand and eighty strong, and
Bobby belonged to them; for was he not a Subaltern of
the Line — the whole Line and nothing but the Line — as
the tramp of two thousand one hundred and sixty sturdy
ammunition boots attested? He would not have changed
places with Deighton of the Horse Battery, whirling by in
a pillar of cloud to a chorus of 'Strong right! Strong
left!' or Hogan-Yale of the White Hussars, leading his
squadron for all it was worth, with the price of horseshoes
thrown in; or 'Tick' Boileau, trying to live up to his fierce
blue and gold turban while the wasps of the Bengal
Cavalry stretched to a gallop in the wake of the long,
lollopping Walers of the White Hussars.

They fought through the clear cool day, and Bobby
felt a little thrill run down his spine when he heard the
tinkle-tinkle-tinkle of the empty cartridge-cases hopping
from the breech-locks after the roar of the volleys; for ht
knew that he should live to hear that sound in action.
The review ended in a glorious chase across the plain-

ONLY A SUBALTERN g>

ft

batteries thundering after cavalry to the huge disgust of
the White Hussars, and the Tyneside Tail Twisters
hunting a Sikh Regiment, till the lean lathy Singhs panted
.vith exhaustion. Bobby was dusty and dripping long
before noon, but his enthusiasm was merely focused — not
diminished.

He returned to sit at the feet of Revere, his 'skipper,'
that is to'say, the Captain of his Company, and to be in-
structed in the dark art and mystery of managing men,
which is a very large part of the Profession of Arms.

'If you haven't a taste that way,' said Revere between
his puffs of his cheroot, 'you'll never be able to get the
hang of it, but remember, Bobby, 'tisn't the best drill,
though drill is nearly everything, that hauls a Regiment
through Hell and out on the other side. It's the man
who knows how to handle men — goat-men, swine-men,
dog-men, and so on.'

'Dormer, for instance,' said Bobby, 'I think he comes
under the head of fool-men. He mopes like a sick owl.'

'That's where you make your mistake, my son.
Dormer isn't a fool yet, but he's a dashed dirty soldier, and
his room corporal makes fun of his socks before kit-in-
spection. Dormer, being two-thirds pure brute, goes
into a corner and growls.'

'How do you know?' said Bobby admiringly.

'Because a Company commander has to know these
things — because, if he does not know, he may have crime
— ay, murder brewing under his very nose and yet not
see that it's there. Dormer is being badgered out of his
mirid —big as he is and he hasn't intellect enough to
resent it. " He's taken to quiet boozing and, Bobby, when
the butt of a room goes on the drink, or takes to moping
by himself, measures are necessary to pull him out of
himself.'

98

UNDER THE DEODARS

'What measures? 'Man can't run round coddling his
men for ever.'

'No. The men would precious soon show him that he
was not wanted. You've got to '

Here the Colour-sergeant entered with some papers;
Bobby reflected for a while as Revere looked through the
Company forms.

'Does Dormer do anything, Sergeant?' Bobby asked
with the air of one continuing an interrupted conversa-
tion.

'No, sir. Does 'is dooty like a hortomato,' said the
Sergeant, who delighted in long words. 'A dirty soldier,
and 'e's under full stoppages for new kit. It's covered
with scales, sir.'

' Scales? What scales? '

'Fish-scales, sir. 'E's always pokin' in the mud by
the river an' a-cleanin' them muchly-fish with 'is thumbs.'
Revere was still absorbed in the Company papers, and
the Sergeant, who was sternly fond of Bobby, continued,
— ' 'E generally goes down there when 'e's got 'is skinful,
beggin' your pardon, sir, an' they do say that the more
lush — in-/ze-briated 'e is, the more fish 'e catches. They
call 'im the Looney Fishmonger in the Comp'ny, sir.'

Revere signed the last paper and the Sergeant re-
treated.

'It's a filthy amusement,' sighed Bobby to himself.
Then aloud to Revere: 'Are you really worried about
Dormer? '

'A little. You see he's never mad enough to send to
hospital, or drunk enough to run in, but at any minute he
may flare up, brooding and sulking as he does. He
resents any interest being shown in him, and the only
time I took him out shooting he all but shot me by
accident.'

ONLY A SUBALTERN

99

' I fish,' said Bobby with a wry face. ' I hire a country-
boat and go down the river from Thursday to Sunday,
and the amiable Dormer goes with me — if you can spare
us both. '

'You blazing young fool!' said Revere, but his heart
was full of much more pleasant words.

Bobby, the Captain of a dhoni, with Private Dormer
for mate, dropped down the river on Thursday morning —
the Private at the bow, the Subaltern at the helm. The
Private glared uneasily at the Subaltern, who respected
the reserve of the Private.

After six hours, Dormer paced to the stern, saluted, and
said — ' Beg y' pardon, sir, but was you ever on the Durh'm
Canal?'

'No,' said Bobby Wick. 'Come and have some tiffin.'

They ate in silence. As the evening fell, private
Dormer broke forth, speaking to himself —

'Hi was on the Durh'm Canal, jes' such a night,
come next week twelve month, a-trailin' of my toes m
the water.' He smoked and said no more till bedtime.

The witchery of the dawn turned the gray river-
reaches to purple, gold, and opal; and it was as though
the lumbering dhoni crept across the splendours of a new
heaven.

Private Dormer popped his head out of his blanket
and gazed at the glory below and around.

'Well— damn — my eyes!' said Private Dormer in an
awed whisper. 'This 'ere is like a bloomin' gallantry-
show!' Fgr the rest of the day he was dumb, but
achieved an ensanguined lilthincss through the cleaning
of big fish.v

The boat returned on Saturday evening. Dormer
had been struggling with speech since noon. As the lines
and luggage were being disembarked, he found tongue.

IOO

UNDER THE DEODARS

'Beg y paraon, sir,' he said, 'but would you — would
you min' shakin' 'ands with me, sir? '

'Of course not/ said Bobby, and he shook accord-
ingly. Dormer returned to barracks and Bobby to mess.

'He wanted a little quiet and some fishing, I think,'
said Bobby. 'My aunt, but he's a filthy sort of ani-
mal! Have you ever seen him clean "them, muchly-
fish with 'is thumbs"?'

'Anyhow,' said Revere three weeks later, 'he's doing
his best to keep his things clean.'

When the spring died, Bobby joined in the general
scramble for Hill leave, and to his surprise and delight
secured three months.

'As good a boy as I want,' said Revere the admiring
skipper.

'The best of the batch,' said the Adjutant to the
Colonel. 'Keep back that young skrimshanker Por-
kiss, sir, and let Revere make him sit up.'

So Bobby departed joyously to Simla Pahar with a
tin box of gorgeous raiment.

"Son of Wick— old Wick of Chota-Buldana? Ask
lim to dinner, dear,' said the aged men.

'What a nice boy!' said the matrons and the maids.

' First-class place, SimJa. Oh, ri — ipping ! ' said Bobby
Wick, and ordered new white cord breeches on the
strength of it.

'We're in a bad way,' wrote Revere to Bobby at the
end of two months. 'Since you left, the Regiment
has taken to fever and is fairly rotten with it — two
hundred in hospital, about a hundred in cells — drinking
to keep off fever — and the Companies on parade fifteen
file strong at the outside. There's rather more sickness
in the out-villages than I care for, but then I'm so blis-
tered with prickly heat that I'm ready to hang myself,

ONLY A SUBALTERN

rot

What's the yarn about your mashing a Miss Haverley
up there? Not serious, I hope? You're over-young
to hang millstones round your neck, and the Colonel will
turf you out of that in double-quick time if you at-
tempt it.'

It was not the Colonel that brought Bobby out of
Simla, but a much more to be respected Commandant.
The sickness in the out-villages spread, the Bazar was
put out of bounds, and then came the news that the
Tail Twisters must go into camp. The message flashed
to the Hill stations. — 'Cholera — Leave stopped — Ofii-<
cers recalled.' Alas, for the white gloves in the neatly
soldered boxes, the rides and the dances and picnics that
were to be, the loves half spoken, and the debts unpaid!
Without demur and without question, fast as tonga
could fly or pony gallop, back to their Regiments and
their Batteries, as though they were hastening to their
weddings, fled the subalterns.

Bobby received his orders on returning from a dance
at Viceregal Lodge where he had- — but only the Haver-
ley girl knows what Bobby had said or how many waltzes
he had claimed for the next ball. Six in the morning saw
Bobby at the Tonga Office in the drenching rain, the
whirl of the last waltz still in his ears, and an intoxication
due neither to wine nor waltzing in his brain.

'Good man!' shouted Deighton of the Horse Battery
through the mists. 'Whar you raise dat tonga? Tin
coming with you. ()w! But I've a head and half. /
didn't sit <mt all night. They say the Battery's awfu.
bad, 'and hp hummed dolorously

'Leave the what at the what's its-name,
Leave the Sock without shelter,

Leave the corpse lininterred,

Leave the bride at the altar!

102

UNDER THE DEODARS

'My faith! It'll be more bally corpse than bride,
though, this journey. Jump in, Bobby. Get on,
CoachwanV

On the Umballa platform waited a detachment of
officers discussing the latest news from the stricken
cantonment, and it was here that Bobby learned the
real condition of the Tail Twisters.

'They went into camp,' said an elderly Major recalled
from the whist- tables at Mussoorie to a sickly Native
Regiment, 'they went into camp with two hundred and
ten sick in carts. Two hundred and ten fever cases
only, and the balance looking like so many ghosts with
sore eyes. A Madras Regiment could have walked
through 'em.'

'But they were as fit as be-damned when I left them!'
said Bobby.

'Then you'd better make them as fit as be-damned
when you rejoin,' said the Major brutally.

Bobby pressed his forehead against the rain-splashed
window pane as the train lumbered across the sodden
Doab, and prayed for the health of the Tyneside Tail
Twisters. Nairn* Tal had sent down her contingent
with all speed; the lathering ponies of the Dalhousie
Road staggered into Pathankot, taxed to the full stretch
of their strength; while from cloudy Darjiling the Cal-
cutta Mail whirled up the last straggler of the little army
that was to fight a fight, in which was neither medal
nor honour for the winning, against an enemy none
other 'than 'the sickness that destroyeth in the noon-
day.'

And as each man reported himself, he said: 'This
is a bad business,' and went about his own forthwith,
for every Regiment and Battery in the cantonment was
under canvas, the sickness bearing them company.

ONLY A SUBALTERN

Bobby fought his way through the rain to the Tail
Twisters' temporary mess, and Revere could have fallen
on the boy's neck for the joy of seeing that ugly, whole-
some phiz once more.

'Keep 'em amused and interested,' said Revere.
'They went on the drink, poor fools, after the first two
cases, and there was no improvement. Oh, it's good to
have you back, Bobby! Porkiss is a — never mind.'

Deighton came over from the Artillery camp to attend
a dreary mess dinner, and contributed to the general
gloom by nearly weeping over the condition of his be-
loved Battery. • Porkiss so far forgot himself as to in-
sinuate that the presence of the officers could do no
earthly good, and that the best thing would be to send
the entire Regiment into hospital and 'let the doctors
look after them.' Porkiss was demoralised with fear,
nor was his peace of mind restored when Revere said
"oldly: 'Oh! The sooner you go out the better, if that's
your way of thinking. Any public school could send us
fifty good men in your place, but it takes time, time,
Porkiss, and money, and a certain amount of trouble,
to make a Regiment. 'S'posc you're the person we go
mto camp for, eh?'

Whereupon Porkiss was overtaken with a great and
chilly fear which a drenching in the rain did not allay,
and, two days later, quitted this world for another
where, men do fondly hope, allowances are made for
the weaknesses of the flesh. The Regimental Sergeant-
Major loolyxl wearily across the Sergeants' Me&SN tent
when the news was announced.

'There goes the worst of them/ he said. 'It'll take
the best, and then, please God, it'll stop.' The Ser-
geants were silent till one said: 'It couldn't be him!'
and all knew of whom Travis was thinking.

io4

UNDER THE DEODARS

Bobby Wick stormed through the tents of his Com-
pany, rallying, rebuking, mildly, as is consistent with
the Regulations, chaffing the faint-hearted; haling the
sound into the watery sunlight when there was a break
in the weather, and bidding them be of good cheer for
their trouble was nearly at an end; scuttling on his
dun pony round the outskirts of the camp and heading
back men who, with the innate perversity of British
soldiers, were always wandering into infected villages,
or drinking deeply from rain-flooded marshes; com-
forting the panic-stricken with rude speech, and more
than once tending the dying who had no friends — the
men without 'townies'; organising, with banjos and
burnt cork, Sing-songs which should allow the talent of
the Regiment full play; and generally, as he explained,
'playing the giddy garden-goat all round.'

' You're worth half a dozen of us, Bobby,' said Revere
in a moment of enthusiasm. 'How the devil do you
keep it up? '

Bobby made no answer, but had Revere looked into
the breast-pocket of his coat he might have seen there
a sheaf of badly-written letters which perhaps accounted
for the power that possessed the boy. A letter came
to Bobby every other day. The spelling was not above
reproach, but the sentiments must have, been most sat-
isfactory, for on receipt Bobby's eyes softened marvel-
lously, and he was wont to fall into a tender abstraction
for a while ere, shaking his cropped head, he charged into
his work.

By what power he drew after him the hearts of the
roughest, and the Tail Twisters counted in their ranks
some rough diamonds indeed, was a mystery to
both skipper and C. O., who learned from the regi-
mental chaplain that Bobby was considerably more in

ONLY A SUBALTERN

request in the hospital tents than the Reverend John
Emery.

'The men seem fond of you. Are you hi the hos-
pitals much?' said the Colonel, who did his daily round
and ordered the men to get well with a hardness that
did not cover his bitter grief.

'A little, sir,' said Bobby.

' 'Shouldn't go there too often if I were you. They
say it's not contagious, but there's no use in running
unnecessary risks. We can't afford to have you down,
/'know.'

Six days later, it was with the utmost difficulty that
the post-runner plashed his way out to the camp with
the mail-bags, for the rain was falling in torrents. Bobby
received a letter, bore it off to his tent, and, the pro
gramme for the next week's Sing-song being satisfactorily
disposed of, sat down to answer it. For an hour the un-
handy pen toiled over the paper, and where sentiment
rose to more than normal tide-level, Bobby Wick stuck
out his tongue and breathed heavily. He was not used
to letter-writing.

'Beg y' pardon, sir,' said a voice at the tent door;
'but Dormer's 'orrid bad, sir, an' they've taken him orf,
sir.'

'Damn Private Dormer and you too!' said Bobby
Wick, running the blotter over the half-finished letter.
'Tell him I'll come in the morning.'

' 'K's awful bad, sir,' said the voice hesitatingly. There
-vas an undecided squelching of heavy boots.

'Well?' said Hobby impatiently.

'Kxcusin' 'imself before'and lor takin' the liberty, V
says it would be a comfort for to assist 'im, sir, if

'Talloo Lw ! (iet my pony! Here, come in out of
the rain till I'm »eadv. What blasted nuisances you

io6 UNDER THE DEODARS

are! That's brandy. Drink some; you want it. Hang
on to my stirrup and tell me if I go too fast/

Strengthened by a four-finger 'nip' which he swal-
lowed without a wink, the Hospital Orderly kept up with
the slipping, mud-stained, and very disgusted pony as it
shambled to the hospital tent.

Private Dormer was certainly ' 'orrid bad.' He
had all but reached the stage of collapse and was not
pleasant to look upon.

'What's this, Dormer?' said Bobby, bending over the
man. 'You're not going out this time. You've got to
come fishing with me once or twice more yet.'

The blue lips parted and in the ghost of a whisper
said, — 'Beg y' pardon, sir, disturbin' of you now, bur
would you min' 'oldin' my 'and, sir? '

Bobby sat on the side of the bed, and the icy cold hanc
closed on his own like a vice, forcing a lady's ring which
was on the little finger deep into the flesh. Bobby set his
lips and waited, the water dripping from the hem of his
trousers. An hour passed and the grasp of the hand did
not relax, nor did the expression of the drawn face change.
Bobby with infinite craft lit himself a cheroot with the
left hand, his right arm was numbed to the elbow, and
resigned himself to a night of pain.

Dawn showed a very white-faced Subaltern sitting on
the side of a sick man's cot, and a Doctor in the doorway
using language unfit for publication.

'Have you been here all night, you young ass? ' said the
Doctor.

'There or thereabouts,' said Bobby ruefully. 'He's
frozen on to me.'

Dormer's mouth shut with a click. He turned his
head and sighed. The clinging hand opened, and Bobby's
arm fell useless at his side.

ONLY A SUBALTERN

T07

'He'll do,' said the Doctor quietly. ' It must have been
a toss-up all through the night. 'Think you're to be con-
gratulated on this case.'

c Oh, bosh ! ' said Bobby. ' I thought the man had gone
out long ago — only — only I didn't care to take my hand
away. Rub my arm down, there's a good chap. What a
grip the brute has! I'm chilled to the marrow!' He
passed out of the tent shivering.

Private Dormer was allowed to celebrate his repulse of
Death by strong waters. Four days later, he sat on the
side of his cot and said to the patients mildly : ' I'd 'a' liken
to 'a' spoken to 'im — so I should.'

But at that time Bobby was reading yet another letter
— he had the most persistent correspondent of any man in
camp — and was even then about to write that the sick-
ness had abated, and in another week at the outside
would be gone. He did not intend to say that the chill of
a sick man's hand seemed to have struck into the heart
whose capacities for affection he dwelt on at such length.
He did intend to enclose the illustrated programme of the
forthcoming Sing-song whereof he was not a little proud.
He also intended to write on many other matters whic h
do not concern us, and doubtless would have done so but
lor the slight feverish headache which made him dull and
unresponsive at mess.

'You are overdoing it, Bobby,' said his skipper.
"Might give the rest of us credit of doing a little work.
You go on as if you were the whole Mess rolled into one.
Take it eas^y.'

'I will,' said Bobby. 'I'm feeling done up, some-
how.' Revere looked at him anxiously and said noth-
ing-
There was a flickering of lanterns about the camp that
night, and a rumour that brought men out of their eots to

io8

UNDER THE DEODARS

the tent doors, a paddling of the naked feet of doolie-
bearers and the rush of a galloping horse.

'Wot's up?' asked twenty tents; and through twenty
tents ran the answer — 'Wick, Vs down.'

They brought the news to Revere and he groaned.
'Any one but Bobby and I shouldn't have cared! The
Sergeant-Ma jor was right. '

'Not going out this journey,' gasped Bobby, as he was
lifted from the doolie. 'Not going out this journey.'
Then with an air of supreme conviction — 'I can't, you
see.'

'Not if I can do anything!' said the Surgeon-Major,
who had hastened over from the mess where he had been
dining.

He and the Regimental Surgeon fought together with
Death for the life of Bobby Wick. Their work was in-
terrupted by a hairy apparition in a blue-gray dressing-
gown who stared in horror at the bed and cried— 'Oh, my
Gawd! It can't be 'imT until an indignant Hospital
Orderly whisked him away.

If care of man and desire to live could have done aught,
3obby would have been saved. As it was, he made a fight
uf three days, and the Surgeon-Major's brow uncreased.
"We'll save him yet,' he said; and the Surgeon, who,
though he ranked with the Captain, had a very youthful
heart, went out upon the word and pranced joyously in
the mud.

' Not going out this journey,' whispered Bobby Wick
gallantly, at the end of the third day.

' Bravo ! ' said the'Surgeon-Major. ' That's the way to
look at it, Bobby.'

As evening fell a gray shade gathered round Bobby's
mouth, and he turned his face to the tent wall wearily.
The Surgeon-Major frowned.

ONLY A SUBALTERN

log

' I'm awfully tired,' said Bobby, very faintly. £ What's
the use of bothering me with medicine? I — don't —
want — it. Let me alone.'

The desire for life had departed, and Bobby was con-
tent to drift away on the easy tide of Death.

'It's no good,' said the Surgeon-Major. 'He doesn't
want to live. He's meeting it, poor child.' And he blew
his nose.

Half a mile away the regimental band was playing the
overture to the Sing-song, for the men had been told that
Bobby was out of danger. The clash of the brass and thej
wail of the horns reached Bobby's ears.

Is there a single joy or pain,
That I should never kno — ow?
You do not love me, 'tis in vain,
Bid me good-bye and go!

An expression of hopeless irritation crossed the boy's
-ace, and he tried to shake his head.

The Surgeon-Major bent down — •' What is it? Bobby? '
— 1 Not that waltz,' muttered Bobby. 'That's our own
— our very ownest. . . . Mummy dear.'

With this he sank into the stupor that gave place to
death early next morning.

Revere, his eyes red at the rims and his nose very white,
went into Bobby's tent to write a letter to Papa Wick
which should bow the white head of the ex-Commissioner
of Chota-Buldana in the keenest sorrow of his life.
Bobby's little store of papers lay in confusion on the
table, and-among them a half-finished letter. The last
sentence ran: 'So you see, darling, there is really no fear,
because as long as I know you care for me and I care for
you, nothing can touch me.'

no

UNDER THE DEODARS

Revere stayed in the tent for an hour. When he cam
out, his eyes were redder than ever.

*• *1> •Jl* *JLf *Af ^l*

*J» »X» *X* *T* *J* *J» *X* *^

Private Conklin sat on a turned-down bucket, and
listened to a not unfamiliar tune. Private Conklin was a
convalescent and should have been tenderly treated.

' Ho ! ' said Private Conklin. 1 There 's another bloomin'
orf 'cer da — ed.'

The bucket shot from under him and his eyes rilled with
a smithyful of sparks. A tall man in a blue-gray bed-
gown was regarding him with deep disfavour.

' You ought to take shame to yourself, Conky ! Orf 'cer?
— bloomin' orf'cer? I'll learn you to misname the likes cf
'im. Hangel ! Bloomin^ Hangel ! That's wot 'e is ! '

And the Hospital Orderly was so satisfied with the
justice of the punishment that he did not even order
Private Dormer back to his cot.

THE PHANTOM 'RICKSHAW

May no ill dreams disturb my rest,
Nor Powers of Darkness me molest.

Evening Hymn.

One of the few advantages that India has over England is
a great Knowability. After five years' service a man is
directly or indirectly acquainted with the two or three
hundred Civilians in his Province, all the Messes of ten
or twelve Regiments and Batteries, and some fifteen hun-
dred other people of the non-official caste. In ten years his
knowledge should be doubled, and at the end of twenty
years he knows, or knows something about, every English-
man in the Empire; and may travel anywhere and every-
where without paying hotel-bills.

Globe-trotters who expect entertainment as a right,
have, even within my memory, blunted this open-heart-
edness, but none the less to-day, if you belong to the
Inner Circle and are neither a Bear nor a Black Sheep, all
houses are open to you, and our small world is very, very
kind and helpful.

Rickett of Kamartha stayed with Polder of kumaon
some fifteen years ago. He meant to stay two nights, but
was knocked down by rheumatic fever, and for six weeks
disorganised Polder's establishment, stopped Polder's
work, and-nearly died in Polder's bedroom. Polder be-
haves as though he had been placed under eternal ob-
ligation by Riekett, and yearly sends the little Rieketts :i
h** of presents and toys. It is the same everywhere.

1 1 1

112

UNDER THE DEODARS

The men who do not take the trouble to conceal from you
their opinion that you are an incompetent ass, and the
women who blacken your character and misunderstand
your wife's amusements, will work themselves to the bone
in your behalf if you fall sick or into serious trouble.

Heatherlegh, the Doctor, kept, in addition to his regular
practice, a hospital on his private account — an arrange-
ment of loose boxes for Incurables, his friend called it —
but it was really a sort of fitting-up shed for craft that had
been damaged by stress of weather. The weather in
India is often sultry, and since the tale of bricks is always
a fixed quantity, and the only liberty allowed is permis-
sion to work overtime and get no thanks, men occasion-
ally break down and become as mixed as the metaphors in
this sentence.

Heatherlegh is the dearest doctor that ever was, and
his invariable prescription to all his patients is, 'Lie low,
go slow, and keep cool.' He says that more men are
killed by overwork than the importance of this world
justifies. He maintains that overwork slew Pansay, who
died under his hands about three years ago. He has, of
course, the right to speak authoritatively, and he laughs
at my theory that there was a crack in Pansay's head and
a little bit of the Dark World came through and pressed
him to death. ' Pansay went off the handle,' says Heath-
erlegh, ' after the stimulus of long leave at Home. He
may or he may not have behaved like a blackguard to
Mrs. Keith- Wessington. My notion is that the work of
the Katabundi Settlement ran him off his legs, and that
he took to brooding and making much of an ordinary P.
& O. flirtation. He certainly was engaged to Miss
Mannering, and she certainly broke off the engagement.
Then he took a feverish chill and all that nonsense about
ghosts developed. Overwork started his illness, kept it

THE PHANTOM 'RICKSHAW

"3

alight, and killed him, poor devil. Write him off to the
System that uses one man to do the work of two and a
half men.'

I do not believe this. I used to sit up with Pansay some-
times when Heatherlegh was called out to patients and I
happened to be within claim. The man would make me
most unhappy by describing in a low, even voice, the pro-
cession that was always passing at the bottom of his bed.
He had a sick man's command of language. When he re-
covered I suggested that he should write out the whole
affair from beginning to end, knowing that ink might
assist him to ease his mind.

He was in a high fever while he was writing, and the
blood-and-thunder Magazine diction he adopted did not
calm him. Two months afterwards he was reported fit for
duty, but, in spite of the fact that he was urgently needed
to help an undermanned Commission stagger through a
deficit, he preferred to die; vowing at the last that he
was hag-ridden. I got his manuscript before he died, and
this is his version of the affair, dated 1885, exactly as he
wrote it: —

My doctor tells me that I need rest and change of
air. It is not improbable that I shall get both ere
long — rest that neither the red-coated messenger nor
the mid-day gun can break, and change of air far beyond
that which any homeward-bound steamer can give me.
In the meantime I am resolved to stay where I am; and,
in flat defiance of my doctor's orders, to take all the world
into my confidence. You shall learn for yourselves the
precise nature of my malady, and shall, too, judge for
yourselves whether any man born of woman on this
weary earth was ever so tormented as I.

Speaking now as a condemned criminal might speak
sre the drop-bolt? BTO d»awn, my story, wild and hide

H4

UNDER THE DEODARS

ously improbable as it may appear, demands at least
attention. That it will ever receive credence I utterly
disbelieve. Two months ago I should have scouted
as mad or drunk the man who had dared tell me the
like. Two months ago I was the happiest man in India.
To-day, from Peshawar to the sea, there is no one more
wretched. My doctor and I are the only two who know
this. His explanation is, that my brain, digestion, and
eyesight are all slightly affected; giving rise to my fre-
quent and persistent •delusions.' Delusions, indeed! I
call him a fool; but he attends me still with the same un-
wearied smile, the same bland professional manner, the
same neatly- trimmed red whiskers, till I begin to suspect
that I am an ungrateful, evil-tempered invalid. But
you shall judge for yourselves.

Three years ago it was my fortune — my great mis-
fortune— to sail from Gravesend to Bombay, on return
from long leave, with one Agnes Keith-Wessington, wife
of an officer on the Bombay side. It does not in the least
concern you to know what manner of woman she was.
Be content with the knowledge that, ere the voyage had
ended, both she and I were desperately and unreasoningly
in love with one another. Heaven knows that I can
make the admission now without one particle of vanity.
In matters of this sort there is always one who gives
and another who accepts. From the first day of our
ill-omened attachment, I was conscious that Agnes's
passion was a stronger, a more dominant, and — if I
may use the expression — a purer sentiment than mine.
Whether she recognised the fact then, I do not know.
Afterwards it was bitterly plain to both of us.

Arrived at Bombay in the spring of the year, we
went our respective ways, to meet no more for the
next three or four months, when my leave and her love

THE PHANTOM 'RICKSHAW

"5

*ook us both to Simla. There we spent the season to-
gether; and there my fire of straw burnt itself out to a
pitiful end with the closing year. I attempt no excuse.
I make no apology. Mrs. Wessington had given up
much for my sake, and was prepared to give up all.
From my own lips, in August, 1882, she learnt that I was
sick of her presence, tired of her company, and weary of
the sound of her voice. Ninety-nine women out of a
hundred would wearied of me as I wearied of them;
seventy-five of that number would have promptly avenged
themselves by active and obtrusive flirtation with other
men. Mrs. Wessington was the hundredth. On her
neither my openly-expressed aversion nor the cutting
brutalities with which I garnished our interviews had the
least effect.

'Jack, darling!' was her one eternal cuckoo cry:
I'm sure it's all a mistake — a hideous mistake; and
we'll be good friends again some day. Please forgive
me, Jack, dear.'

I was the offender, and I knew it. That knowledge
transformed my pity into passive endurance, and, even-
tually, into blind hate — the same instinct, I suppose,
which prompts a man to savagely stamp on the spider
he has but half killed. And with this hate in my bosom
the season of 1882 came to an end.

Next year we met again at Simla -she with her monoto-
nous face and timid attempts at reconciliation, and I
with loathing of her in every fibre of my frame. Several
times I could not avoid meeting her alone; and on each
occasion her words were identically the same. Still the
unreasoning wail that it was all a 'mistake'; and still the
hope of eventually 'making friends.' I might have seen,
had I cared to look, that that hope only was keeping her
alive. She grew more wan and thin month by month.

n6

UNDER THE DEODARS

You will agree with me, at least, that such conduct would
have driven any one to despair. It was uncalled for;
childish; unwomanly. I maintain that she was much to
blame. And again, sometimes, in the black, fever-
stricken night-watches, I have begun to think that I
might have been a little kinder to her. But that really
is a 'delusion.' I could not have continued pretending
to love her when I didn't; could I? It would have been
unfair to us both.

Last year we met again — on the same terms as before.
The same weary appeals, and the same curt answers
from my lips. At least I would make her see how wholly
wrong and hopeless were her attempts at resuming the
old relationship. As the season wore on, we fell apart —
that is to say, she found it difficult to meet me, for I
had other and more absorbing interests to attend to.
When I think it over quietly in my sick-room, the season
of 1884 seems a confused nightmare wherein light and
shade were fantastically intermingled — my courtship
of little Kitty Mannering; my hopes, doubts, and fears;
our long rides together; my trembling avowal of at-
tachment; her reply; and now and again a vision of a
white face flitting by in the 'rickshaw with the black
and white liveries I once watched for so earnestly; the
wave of Mrs. Wessington's gloved hand; and, when she
met me alone, which was but seldom, the irksome mo-
notony of her appeal. I loved Kitty Mannering ; honestly,
heartily loved her, and with my love for her grew my
hatred for Agnes. In August Kitty and I were en-
gaged. The next day I met those accursed ' mag-pie'
jhampanies at the back of Jakko, and, moved by some
passing sentiment of pity, stopped to tell Mrs. Wessing-
ton everything. She knew it already.

'So I hear you're engaged, Jack dear.' Then, witK

THE PHANTOM 'RICKSHAW

H7

out a moment's pause: 'I'm sure it's all a mistake — a
hideous mistake. We shall be as good friends some
day, Jack, as we ever were.'

My answer might have made even a man wince. It
cut the dying woman before me like the blow of a whip.
'Please forgive me, Jack; I didn't mean to make you
angry; but it's true, it's true!'

And Mrs. Wessington broke down completely. I
turned away and left her to finish her journey in peace,
feeling, but only for a moment or two, that I had been
an unutterably mean hound. I looked back, and saw
that she had turned her 'rickshaw with the idea, I sup-
pose, of overtaking me.

The scene and its surroundings were photographed
on my memory. The rain-swept sky (we were at the
end of the wet weather), the sodden, dingy pines, the
muddy road, and the black powder-riven cliffs formed
a gloomy background against which the black and white
liveries of the jhampanies, the yellow-panelled 'rickshaw
and Mrs. Wessington's down-bowed golden head stood
out clearly. She was holding her handkerchief in her
left hand and was leaning back exhausted against the
'rickshaw cushions. I turned my horse up a bypath
near the Sanjowlie Reservoir and literally ran away.
Once I fancied I heard a faint call of 'Jack!' This may
have been imagination. I never stopped to verify it.
Ten minutes later I came across Kitty on horseback; and,
in the delight of a long ride with her, forgot all about the
interview.

0

A week later Mrs. Wessington died, and the mex
pressible burden of her existence was removed from my
life. I went I Mainsward perfectly happy. Before three
months were over I had forgotten all about her, except
that at times the discovery of some of her old letters

■

UNDER THE DEODARS

reminded me unpleasantly of our bygone relationship.
By January I had disinterred what was left of our
correspondence from among my scattered belongings
and had burnt it. At the beginning of April of this
year, 1885, I was at Simla — semi-deserted Simla —
once more, and was deep in lover's talks and walks with
Kitty. It was decided that we should be married at
the end of June. You will understand, therefore, that,
loving Kitty as I did, I am not saying too much when
I pronounce myself to have been, at that time, the hap-
piest man in India.

Fourteen delightful days passed almost before I
noticed their flight. Then, aroused to the sense of
what was proper among mortals circumstanced as we
were, I pointed out to Kitty that an engagement ring
was the outward and visible sign of her dignity as an en-
gaged girl; and that she must forthwith come to Ham-
ilton's to be measured for one. Up to that moment, I
give you my word, we had completely forgotten so
trivial a matter. To Hamilton's we accordingly went
on the 15 th of April, 1885. Remember that — whatever
my doctor may say to the contrary — I was then in per-
fect health, enjoying a well-balanced mind and an abso-
lutely tranquil spirit. Kitty and I entered Hamilton's
shop together, and there, regardless of the order of af-
fairs, I measured Kitty for the ring in the presence of the
amused assistant. The ring was a sapphire with twc
diamonds. We then rode out down the slope that lead?
to the Combermere Bridge and Peliti's shop.

While my Waler was cautiously feeling his way ove;
the loose shale, and Kitty was laughing and chattering
at my side — while all Simla, that is to say as much 01
it as had then come from the Plains, was grouped round
the Reading-room and Peliti's veranda, — I was aware

THE PHANTOM 'RICKSHAW 119

that some one, apparently at a vast distance, was call-
ing me by my Christian name. It struck me that I
had heard the voice before, but when and where I could
not at once determine. In the short space it took to
cover the road between the path from Hamilton's shop
and the first plank of the Combermere Bridge I had
thought over half a dozen people who might have com-
mitted such a solecism, and had eventually decided that
it must have been some singing in my ears. Immedi-
ately opposite Peliti's shop my eye was arrested by the
sight of four jhampanies in ' mag-pie' livery, pulling a
yellow-panelled, cheap, bazar 'rickshaw. In a moment
my mind flew back to the previous season and Mrs.
Wessington with a sense of irritation and disgust. Was
it not enough that the woman was dead and done with,
without her black and white servitors reappearing to
spoil the day's happiness? Whoever employed them
now I thought I would call upon, and ask as a personal
favour to change her jhamp unies1 livery. I would hire
the men myself, and, if necessary, buy their coats from
off their backs. It is impossible to say here what a
flood of undesirable memories their presence evoked.

'Kitty,' I cried, 'there are poor Mrs. Wessington's
jhampanies turned up again! I wonder who has them
now?'

Kitty had known Mrs. Wessington slightly last sea-
son, and had always been interested in the sickly woman.

'What? Where?' she asked. 'I can't see them any-
where.' *»

Even as -she spoke, her horse, swerving from a laden
mule, threw himself directly in front of the advancing
'rickshaw. I had scarcely time to utter a word of warn-
ing when to my unutterable horror, horse and rider passed
through men and carriage as if they had been tlun air.

120

UNDER THE DEODARS

'What's the matter?' cried Kitty; 'what made you
call out so foolishly, Jack? If I am engaged I don't
want all creation to know about it. There was lots of
space between the mule and the veranda; and, if you
think I can't ride There!'

Whereupon wilful Kitty set off, her dainty little
head in the air, at a hand-gallop in the direction of the
Band-stand; fully expecting, as she herself afterwards
told me, that I should follow her. What was the matter?
Nothing indeed. Either that I was mad or drunk, or
that Simla was haunted with devils. I reined in my
impatient cob, and turned round. The 'rickshaw had
turned too, and now stood immediately facing me, near
the left railing of the Combermere Bridge.

'Jack! Jack, darling!' (There was no mistake
about the words this time: they rang through my brain
as if they had been shouted in my ear.) ' It's some hide-
ous mistake, I'm sure. Please forgive me. Jack, and let's
be friends again.'

The 'rickshaw-hood had fallen back, and inside, as I
hope and pray daily for the death I dread by night,
sat Mrs. Keith- Wessington, handkerchief in hand, and
golden head bowed on her breast.

How long I stared motionless I do not know. Finally,
I was aroused by my syce taking the Waler's bridle and
asking whether I was ill. From the horrible to the com-
monplace is but a step. I tumbled off my horse and
dashed, half fainting, into Peliti's for a glass of cherry-
brandy. There two or three couples were gathered
round the coffee-tables discussing the gossip of the day.
Their trivialities were more comforting to me just then
than the consolations of religion could have been. I
plunged into the midst of the conversation at once;
chatted, laughed, and jested with a face (when I caught

THE PHANTOM 'RICKSHAW

121

a glimpse of it in a mirror) as white and drawn as that of
a corpse. Three or four men noticed my condition; and,
evidently setting it down to the results of over-many
pegs, charitably endeavoured to draw me apart from the
rest of the loungers. But I refused to be led away. I
wanted the company of my kind — as a child rushes into
the midst of the dinner-party after a fright in the dark. I
must have talked for about ten minutes or so, though it
seemed an eternity to me, when I heard Kitty's clear voice
outside enquiring for me. In another minute she had
entered the shop, prepared to upbraid me for failing so
signally in my duties. Something in my face stopped her.

'Why, Jack,' she cried, 'what have you been doing?
What has happened? Are you ill?' Thus driven into a
direct lie, I said that the sun had been a little too much
for me. It was close upon five o'clock of a cloudy April
afternoon, and the sun had been hidden all day. I saw my
mistake as soon as the words were out of my mouth: at-
tempted to recover it; blundered hopelessly and followed
Kitty, in a regal rage, out of doors, amid the smiles of my
acquaintances. I made some excuse (I have forgotten
what) on the score of my feeling faint; and cantered away
to my hotel, leaving Kitty to finish the ride by herself.

In my room I sat down and tried calmly to reason out
the matter. Here was I, Theobald Jack Pansay, a well-
educated Bengal Civilian in the year of grace [885, pre-
sumably sane, certainly healthy, driven in terror from my
sweetheart's side by the apparition of a woman who had
been deadend buried eight months ago. These were
facts that L could not blink. Nothing was further from
my thought than any memory of Mrs. Wessington when
Kitty and I left Hamilton's shop. Nothing was more
utterly commonplace than the stretch of wall opposite
Peliti's. It was broad daylight. The road was full of

122

UNDER THE DEODARS

people; and yet here, look you, in defiance of every law of
probability, in direct outrage of Nature's ordinance, there
had appeared to me a face from the grave.

Kitty's Arab had gone through the 'rickshaw : so that my
first hope that some woman marvellously like Mrs. Wes-
sington had hired the carriage and the coolies with their
old livery was lost. Again and again I went round this
treadmill of thought; and again and again gave up baffled
and in despair. The voice was as inexplicable as the ap-
parition. I had originally some wild notion of confiding it
all to Kitty; of begging her to marry me at once; and in
her arms defying the ghostly occupant of the 'rickshaw.
' After all/ I argued, 'the presence of the 'rickshaw is in
itself enough to prove the existence of a spectral illusion.
One may see ghosts of men and women, but surely never
coolies and carriages. The whole thing is absurd. Fancy
the ghost of- a hillman ! '

Next morning I sent a penitent note to Kitty, imploring
her to overlook my strange conduct of the previous after-
noon. My Divinity was still very wroth, and a personal
apology was necessary. I explained, with a fluency born
of night-long pondering over a falsehood, that I had been
attacked with a sudden palpitation of the heart — the re-
sult of indigestion. This eminently practical solution
had its effect: and Kitty and I rode out that afternoon
with the shadow of my first lie dividing us.

Nothing would please her save a canter round Jakko.
With my nerves still unstrung from the previous night I
feebly protested against the notion, suggesting Observa-
tory Hill, Jutogh, the Boileaugunge road — anything
rather than the Jakko round. Kitty was angry and a lit-
tle hurt; so I yielded from fear of provoking further mis-
understanding, and we set out together towards Chota
Simla. We walked a greater part of the way, and, accord-

THE PHANTOAv 'RICKSHAW

123

ing to our custom, cantered from a mile or so below the
Convent to the stretch of level road by the Sanjowlie Res-
ervoir. The wretched horses appeared to fly, and my
heart beat quicker and quicker as we neared the crest of
the ascent. My mind had been full of Mrs. Wessington all
the afternoon; and every inch of the Jakko road bore
witness to our old-time, walks and talks. The bowlders
were full of it; the pines sang it aloud overhead; the rain-
fed torrents giggled and chuckled unseen over the shame-
ful story; and the wind in my ears chanted the iniquity
aloud.

As a fitting climax, in the middle of the level men call
the Ladies' Mile the Horror was awaiting me. No other
'rickshaw was in sight — only the four black and white
jhampanies, the yellow-panelled carriage, and the golden
head of the woman within — all apparently just as I had
left them eight months and one fortnight ago! For an
instant I fancied that Kitty must see what I saw — we
were so marvellously sympathetic in all things. Her
next words undeceived me — ' Not a soul in sight ! Come
along, Jack, and I'll race you to the Reservoir buildings ! '
Her wiry little Arab was off like a bird, my Waler follow-
ing close behind, and in this order we dashed under the
cliffs. Half a minute brought us within fifty yards of the
'rickshaw. I pulled my Waler and fell back a little. The
'rickshaw was directly in the middle of the road ; and once
more the Arab passed through it, my horse following.
'Jack! Jack, dear! Please forgive me,' rang with a wail in
my ears, ^nd, after an interval: 'It's all a mistake, a
hideous mistake! '

I spurred my horse like a man possessed. When I
turned my head at the Reservoir works, the black and
white liveries were st ill wait ing pat ient I v wait ing under
the gray hillside, and the wind brought me a mocking echo

124 UNDER THE DEODARS

of the words I had just heard. Kitty bantered me a good
deal on my silence throughout the remainder of the ride.
I had been talking up till then wildly and at random. To
save my life I could not speak afterwards naturally, and
from Sanjowlie to the Church wisely held my tongue.

I was to dine with the Mannerings that night, and had
barely time to canter home to dress. On the road to
Elysium Hill I overheard two men talking together in the
dusk. — 'It's a curious thing/ said one, 'how com-
pletely all trace of it disappeared. You know my wife was
insanely fond of the woman (never could see anything
in her myself), and wanted me to pick up her old 'rick-
shaw and coolies if they were to be got for love or money.
Morbid sort of fancy I call it; but I've got to do what the
Memsahib tells me. Would you believe that the man she
hired it from tells me that all four of the men — they were
brothers — died of cholera on the way to Hardwar, poor
devils; and the 'rickshaw has been broken up by the man
himself. 'Told me he never used a dead Memsahib 's
'rickshaw. 'Spoilt his luck. Queer notion, wasn't it?
Fancy poor little Mrs. Wessington spoiling any one's luck
except her own!' I laughed aloud at this point; and my
laugh jarred on me as I uttered it. So there were ghosts
of 'rickshaws after all, and ghostly employments in the
other world! How much did Mrs. Wessington give her
men? What were their hours? Where did they go?

And for visible answer to my last question I saw the in-
fernal Thing blocking my path in the twilight. The dead
travel fast, and by short cuts unknown to ordinary coolies.
I laughed aloud a second time and checked my laughter
suddenly, for I was afraid I was going mad. Mad to a
certain extent I must have been, for I recollect that I
reined in my horse at the head of the 'rickshaw, and
politely wished Mrs. Wessington 'Good-evening.' Her

THE PHANTOM 'RICKSHAW 125

answer was one I knew only too well. I listened to the
end; and replied that I had heard it all before, but should
be delighted if she had anything further to say. Some
malignant devil stronger than I must have entered into
me that evening, for I have a dim recollection of talking
the commonplaces of the day for five minutes to the
Thing in front of me.

' Mad as a hatter, poor devil — or drunk. Max, try and
get him to come home.'

Surely that was not Mrs. Wessington's voice! The two
men had overheard me speaking to the empty air, and had
returned to look after me. They were very kind and con-
siderate, and from their words evidently gathered that I
was extremely drunk. I thanked them confusedly and
cantered away to my hotel, there changed, and arrived at
the Mannerings' ten minutes late. I pleaded the dark-
ness of the night as an excuse; was rebuked by Kitty for
my unlover-like tardiness; and sat down.

The conversation had already become general; and
under cover of it, I was addressing some tender small talk
to my sweetheart when I was aware that at the further
end of the table a short red-whiskered man was describ-
ing, with much broidery, his encounter with a mad un-
known that evening.

A few sentences convinced me that he was repeating
the incident of half an hour ago. In the middle of the
story he looked round for applause, as professional story-
tellers do, caught my eye, and straightway collapsed.
There was a moment's awkward silence, and tin* red-
whiskered-man muttered something to the effect that he
had 'forgotten the rest,1 thereby sacrificing a reputation
as a good story-teller which he had built up for six seasons
past. I blessed him from the bottom of my heart, and —
Went on with my fish.

126

UNDER THE DEODARS

In the fulness of time that dinner came to an end; and
with genuine regret I tore myself away from Kitty — as
certain as I was of my own existence that It would be
waiting for me outside the door. The red- whiskered man,
who had been introduced to me as Dr. Heatherlegh of
Simla, volunteered to bear me company as far as our roads
lay together. I accepted his offer with gratitude.

My instinct had not deceived me. It lay in readiness
in the Mall, and, in what seemed devilish mockery of our
ways, with a lighted head-lamp. The red-whiskered man
went to the point at once, in a manner that showed he
had been thinking over it all dinner-time.

' I say, Pansay, what the deuce was the matter with you
this evening on the Elysium Road? ' The suddenness of
the question wrenched an answer from me before I was
r ware.

'That! ' said I, pointing to It.

'That may be either D. T. or Eyes for aught I know.
Now you don't liquor. I saw as much at dinner, so i£
can't be D. T. There's nothing whatever where you're
pointing, though you're sweating and trembling with
fright, like a scared pony. Therefore, I conclude that it's
Eyes. And I ought to understand all about them.
Come along home with me. I'm on the Blessington
lower road.'

To my intense delight the 'rickshaw instead of waiting
for us kept about twenty yards ahead — and this, too,
whether we walked, trotted, or cantered. In the course
of that long night ride I had told my companion almost
as much as I have told you here.

'Well, you've spoilt one of the best tales I've ever laid
tongue to,' said he, 'but I'll forgive you for the sake of
what you've gone through. Now come home and do
what I tell you; and when I've cured you, young man, let

THE PHANTOM 'RICKSHAW

127

this be a lesson to you to steer clear of women and in-
digestible food till the day of your death.'

The 'rickshaw kept steady in front; and my red-
whiskered friend seemed to derive great pleasure from my
account of its exact whereabouts.

'Eyes, Pansay — all Eyes, Brain, and Stomach. And
the greatest of these is Stomach. You've too much
conceited Brain, too little Stomach, and thoroughly un-
healthy eyes. Get your Stomach straight and the rest
follows. And all that's French for a liver pill. I'll
take sole medical charge of you from this hour! for you're
too interesting a phenomenon to be passed over.'

By this time we were deep in the shadow of the Bless-
ington lower road and the 'rickshaw came to a dead stop
under a pine-clad, overhanging shale cliff. Instinctively
I halted too, giving my reason. Heatherlegh rapped out
an oath.

'Now, if you think I'm going to spend a cold night on
the hillside for the sake of a Stomach-cwra-Brain-a/w-
Eye illusion Lord, ha' mercy! What's that?'

There was a muffled report, a blinding smother oi
dust just in front of us, a crack, the noise of rent boughs,
and about ten yards of the cliff -side — pines, undergrowth,
and all — slid down into the road below, completely block-
ing it up. The uprooted trees swayed and tottered for
a moment like drunken giants in the gloom, and then fell
prone among their fellows with a thunderous crash.
Our two horses stood motionless and sweating with fear.
As soon as^the rattle of falling earth and stone had sub-
sided, my companion muttered: 'Man, if we'd gone for-
ward we should have been ten feel deep in our graves by
now. "There are more things in heaven and earth.''
. . . Come home, Pansay, and I hank God. 1 want
a peg badly '

UNDER THE DEODARS

We retraced our way over the Church Ridge, and I
arrived at Dr. Heatherlegh's house shortly after midnight.

His attempts towards my cure commenced almost im^
mediately, and for a week I never left his sight. Many
a time in the course of that week did I bless the good-
fortune which had thrown me in contact with Simla's
best and kindest doctor. Day by day my spirits, grew
lighter and more equable. Day by day, too, I became
more and more inclined to fall in with Heatherlegh's
'spectral illusion' theory, implicating eyes, brain, and
stomach. I wrote to Kitty, telling her that a slight
sprain caused by a fall from my horse kept me indoors
for a few days; and that I should be recovered before
she had time to regret my absence.

Heatherlegh's treatment was simple to a degree. It
consisted of liver pills, cold-water baths, and strong
exercise, taken in the dusk or at early dawn — for, as
he sagely observed: ' A man with a sprained ankle
doesn't walk a dozen miles a day, and your young wo-
man might be wondering if she saw you.'

At the end of the week, after much examination of
pupil and pulse, and strict injunctions as to diet and
pedestrianism, Heatherlegh dismissed me as brusquely
as he had taken charge of me. Here is his parting
benediction: 'Man, I certify to your mental cure, and
that's as much as to say I've cured most of your bodily
ailments. Now, get your traps out of this as soon as
you can; and be off to make love to Miss Kitty.'

I was endeavouring to express my thanks for his
kindness. He cut me short.

'Don't think I did this because I like you. I gather
that you've behaved like a blackguard all through.
But, all the same, you're a phenomenon, and as queer a
phenomenon as you are a blackguard. No!' — check-

THE PHANTOM 'RICKSHAW

ing me a second time — 'not a rupee, please. Go out
and see if you can find the eyes-brain-and-stomach
business again. I'll give you a lakh for each time you
see it.'

Half an hour later I was in the Mannerings' draw-
ing-room with Kitty — drunk with the intoxication of
present happiness and the foreknowledge that I should
never more be troubled with Its hideous presence.
Strong in the sense of my new-found security, I proposed
a ride at once; and, by preference, a canter round Jakko.

Never had I felt so well, so overladen with vitality
and mere animal spirits, as I did on the afternoon of
the 30th of April. Kitty was delighted at the change
in my appearance, and complimented me on it in her
delightfully frank and outspoken manner. We left
the Mannerings' house together, laughing and talking,
and cantered along the Chota Simla road as of old.

I was in haste to reach the Sanjowlie Reservoir and
there make my assurance doubly sure. The horses did
their best, but seemed all too slow to my impatient
mind. Kitty was astonished at my boistcrousness.
'Why, Jack!' she cried at last, 'you are behaving like a
child. What are you doing?'

We were just below the Convent, and from sheer
wantonness I was making my Walcr plunge and curvet
across the road as I tickled it with the loop of my riding-
whip.

'Doing?' F answered; 'nothing, dear. That's just it.
If you'd hecn doing nothing for a week except lie up,
you'd be as riotous as I.

'Singing and murmuring in your feaslful mirth,

Joying to feel yourself alive;
Lord over Nature, Lord of the visible I'.arth,
Lord of the senses five.'

130

UNDER THE DEODARS

My quotation was hardly out of my lips before we
had rounded the corner above the Convent; and a few
yards further on could see across to Sanjowlie. In the
centre of the level road stood the black and white liv-
eries, the yellow-panelled 'rickshaw, and Mrs. Keith-
Wessington. I pulled up, looked, rubbed my eyes, and,
I believe, must have said something. The next thing
I knew was that I was lying face downward on the road,
with Kitty kneeling above me in tears.

'Has it gone, child!' I gasped. Kitty only wept more
bitterly.

'Has what gone, Jack dear? what does it all mean?
There must be a mistake somewhere, Jack. A hideous
mistake/ Her last words brought me to my feet — mad
— raving for the time being.

'Yes, there is a mistake somewhere,' I repeated, 'a
hideous mistake. Come and look at It.'

I have an indistinct idea that I dragged Kitty by
the wrist along the road up to where It stood, and im-
plored her for pity's sake to speak to It; to tell It that
we were betrothed; that neither Death nor Hell could
break the tie between us: and Kitty only knows
how much more to the same effect. Now and again
I appealed passionately to the Terror in the 'rickshaw
to bear witness to all I had said, and to release me
from a torture that was killing me. As I talked I sup-
pose I must have told Kitty of my old relations with
Mrs. Wessington, for I saw her listen intently with white
face and blazing eyes.

'Thank you, Mr. Pansay,' she said, 'that's quite
enough. Syce ghora Ido.'

The syces, impassive as Orientals always are, had
come up with the recaptured horses; and as Kitty
sprang into her saddle I caught hold of her bridle, en-

THE PHANTOM 'RICKSHAW 131

creating her to hear me out and forgive. My answer
was the cut of her riding- whip across my face from
mouth to eye, and a word or two of farewell that even
now I cannot write down. So I judged and judged
rightly, that Kitty knew all; and I staggered back
to the side of the 'rickshaw. My face was cut and
bleeding, and the blow of the riding- whip had raised a
iivid blue wheal on it. I had no self-respect. Just
then, Heatherlegh, who must have been following Kitty
and me at a distance, cantered up.

'Doctor,' I said, pointing to my face, 'here's Miss
Mannering's signature to my order of dismissal and
— - — I'll thank you for that lakh as soon as convenient.'

Heatherlegh's face, even in my abject misery, moved
me to laughter.

'I'll stake my professional reputation ' he began.

'Don't be a fool,' I whispered. 'I've lost my life's
happiness and you'd better take me home.'

As I spoke the 'rickshaw was gone. Then I lost all
knowledge of what was passing. The crest of Jakko
seemed to heave and roll like the crest of a cloud and fall
in upon me.

Seven days later (on the 7 th of May, that is to say)
I was aware that I was lying in Heatherlegh's room as
weak as a little child. Heatherlegh was watching me
intently from behind the papers on his writing table.
His first words were not encouraging; but I was too tar
spent to be much moved by them.

' Here's JVtiss Kitty has sent back your letters. You
corresponded a good deal, you young people. Here's a
packet that looks like a ring, and a cheerful sort of a
note from Mannering Papa, which I've taken the liberty
of reading and burning. The old gentleman's not pleased
with you.'

mi

UNDER THE DEODARS

'And Kitty? ' I asked dully.

'Rather more drawn than her father from what she
says. By the same token you must have been letting
out any number of queer reminiscences just before I met
you. 'Says that a man who would have behaved to a
woman as you did to Mrs. Wessington ought to kill
himself out of sheer pity for his kind. She's a hot-
headed little virago, your mash. 'Will have it too that
you were suffering from D. T. when that row on the
Jakko road turned up. 'Says she'll die before she ever
speaks to you again.'

I groaned and turned over on the other side.

'Now you've got your choice, my friend. This
engagement has to be broken off; and the Man-
nerings don't want to be too hard on you. Was
it broken through D. T. or epileptic fits? Sorry I
can't offer you a better exchange unless you'd prefer
hereditary insanity. Say the word and I'll tell 'em
it's fits. All Simla knows about that scene on the
Ladies' Mile. Come! I'll give you five minutes to
think over it.'

During those five minutes I believe that I explored
thoroughly the lowest circles of the Inferno which it
is permitted man to tread on earth. And at the same
time I myself was watching myself faltering through
the dark labyrinths of doubt, misery, and utter despair.
I wondered, as Heatherlegh in his chair might have
wondered, which dreadful alternative I should adopt.
Presently I heard myself answering in a voice that I
hardly recognised —

'They're confoundedly particular about morality in
these parts. Give 'em fits, Heatherlegh, and my love.
Now let me sleep a bit longer.'
Then my two selves joined., and it was only I (half-

THE PHANTOM 'RICKSHAW

133

crazed, devil-driven I) that tossed in my bed tracing step
by step the history of the past month.

'But I am in Simla,' I kept repeating to myself. 'I,
Jack Pansay, am in Simla, and there are no ghosts here.
It's unreasonable of that woman to pretend there are.
Why couldn't Agnes have left me alone? I never did
her any harm. It might just as well have been me as
Agnes. Only I'd never have come back on purpose to
kill her. Why can't I be left alone — left alone and
happy? '

It was high noon when I first awoke: and the sun
was low in the sky before I slept — slept as the tortured
criminal sleeps on his rack, too worn to feel further
pain.

Next day I could not leave my bed. Heatherlegh
told me in the morning that he had received an answer
from Mr. Mannering, and that, thanks to his (Heather-
legh's) friendly offices, the story of my affliction had
travelled through the length and breadth of Simla, where
I was on all sides much pitied.

'And that's rather more than you deserve,' he con-
cluded pleasantly, 'though the Lord knows you've been
going through a pretty severe mill. Never mind;
we'll cure you yet, you perverse phenomenon.'

I declined firmly to be cured. 'You've been much
too good to me already, old man,' said I; 'but I don't
think I need trouble you further.'

In my heart I knew that nothing Heatherlegh could
do would lighten the burden that had been laid upon me.

With that knowledge came also a sense of hopeless,
impotent rebellion against the unreasonableness of it
all. There were scores of men no better than I whose
punishments had at least been reserved for another
world; and I felt that it was bitterly, cruelly unfair that

134

UNDER THE DEODARS

I alone should have been singled out for so hideous a
fate. This mood would in time give place to another
where it seemed that the 'rickshaw and I were the only
realities in a world of shadows; that Kitty was a ghost;
that Mannering, Heatherlegh, and all the other men and
women I knew were all ghosts; and the great, gray hills
themselves but vain shadows devised to torture me.
From mood to mood I tossed backwards and forwards
for seven weary days; my body growing daily stronger
and stronger, until the bedroom looking-glass told me
that I had returned to every-day life, and was as other
men once more. Curiously enough my face showed no
signs of the struggle I had gone through. It was pale
indeed, but as expressionless and commonplace as ever
I had expected some permanent alteration — visible
evidence of the disease that was eating me away. 1
found nothing.

On the 15th of May I left Heatherlegh's house at
eleven o'clock in the morning; and the instinct of the
bachelor drove me to the Club. There I found that every
man knew my story as told by Heatherlegh, and was, in
clumsy fashion, abnormally kind and attentive. Never-
theless I recognised that for the rest of my natural life I
should be among but not of my fellows; and I envied
very bitterly indeed the laughing coolies on the Mall be-
low. I lunched at the Club, and at four o'clock wandered
aimlessly down the Mall in the vague hope of meeting
Kitty. Close to the Band-stand the black and white
liveries joined me; and I heard Mrs. Wessington's old
appeal at my side. I had been expecting this ever since
I came out; and was only surprised at her delay. The
phantom 'rickshaw and I went side by side along the
Chota Simla road in silence. Close to the bazar, Kitty
and a man on horseback overtook and passed us. For

THE PHANTOM 'RICKSHAW

i35

any sign she gave I might have been a dog in the road.
She did not even pay me the compliment of quickening
her pace; though the rainy afternoon had served for an
excuse.

So Kitty and her companion, and I and my ghostly
Light-o'-Love, crept round Jakko in couples. The road
was streaming with water; the pines dripped like roof-
pipes on the rocks below, and the air was full of fine,
driving rain. Two or three times I found myself saying
to myself almost aloud: 'I'm Jack Pansay on leave at
Simla — at Simla ! E very-day, ordinary Simla. I mustn't
forget that — I mustn't forget that.' Then I would try to
recollect some of the gossip I had heard at the Club : the
prices of So-and-So's horses — anything, in fact, that re-
fated to the work-a-day Anglo-Indian world I knew so
well. I even repeated the multiplication- table rapidly to
myself, to make quite sure that I was not taking leave of
my senses. It gave me much comfort; and must have
prevented my hearing Mrs. Wessington for a time.

Once more I wearily climbed the Convent slope and
entered the level road. Here Kitty and the man started
off at a canter, and I was left alone with Mrs. Wessington.
'Agnes,' said I, 'will you put back your hood and tell me
what it all means? ' The hood dropped noiselessly, and I
was face to face with my dead and buried mistress. She
was wearing the dress in which I had last seen her alive;
carried the same tiny handkerchief in her righl hand; and
the same gard-case in her left. (A woman eight months
dead with a card-case!) I had to pin myself down to the
tnultiplicadon-table, and to set both hands on the stone
parapet of the road, to assure myself that that at least
was real.

'Agnes,' I repeated, 'for pity's sake tell me what it all

means.' Mrs. Wessington leaned forward, with that odd,

UNDER THE DEODARS

quick turn of the head I used to know so well, and
spoke.

If my story had not already so madly overleaped the
bounds of all human belief I should apologise to you now.
As I know that no one — no, not even Kitty, for whom it is
written as some sort of justification of my conduct — will
believe me, I will go on. Mrs. Wessington spoke and I
walked with her from the Sanjowlie road to the turning
below the Commander-in-Chief's house as I might walk
by the side of any living woman's 'rickshaw, deep in con-
versation. The second and most tormenting of my
moods of sickness had suddenly laid hold upon me, and
like the Prince in Tennyson's poem, 'I seemed to move
amid a world of ghosts.' There had been a garden-party
at the Commander-in-Chief's, and we two joined the
crowd of homeward-bound folk. As I saw them it seemed
that they were the shadows — impalpable fantastic
shadows — that divided for Mrs. Wessington's 'rickshaw
to pass through. What we said during the course of that
weird interview I cannot — indeed, I dare not — tell.
Heatherlegh's comment would have been a short laugh
and a remark that I had^ been 1 mashing a brain-eye-and-
stomach chimera.' It was a ghastly and yet in some in-
definable way a marvellously dear experience. Could it
be possible, I wondered, that I was in this life to woo a
second time the woman I had killed by my own neglect
and cruelty?

I met Kitty on the homeward road — a shadow among
shadows.

If I were to describe all the incidents of the next fort-
night in their order, my story would never come to an end ;
and your patience would be exhausted. Morning after
morning and evening after evening the ghostly 'rickshaw
and I used to wander through Simla together. Wherever

THE PHANTOM 'RICKSHAW 137

X went there the four black and white liveries followed me
and bore me company to and from my hotel. At the
Theatre I found them amid the crowd of yelling jham-
panies; outside the Club veranda, after a long evening of
whist; at the Birthday Ball, waiting patiently for my re-
appearance; and in broad daylight when I went calling.
Save that it cast no shadow, the 'rickshaw was in every
respect as real to look upon as one of wood and iron.
More than once, indeed, I have had to check myself from
warning some hard-riding friend against cantering over it.
More than once I have walked down the Mall deep in con-
versation with Mrs. Wessington to the unspeakable
amazement of the passers-by.

Before I had been out and about a week I learned that
the 'fit' theory had been discarded in favour of insanity.
However, I made no change in my mode of life. I called,
rode, and dined out as freely as ever. I had a passion for
the society of my kind which I had never felt before; I
hungered to be among the realities of life ; and at the same
time I felt vaguely unhappy when I had been separated
too long from my ghostly companion. It would be al-
most impossible to describe my varying moods from the
15th of May up to to-day.

The presence of the 'rickshaw filled me by turns with
horror, blind fear, a dim sort of pleasure, and utter de-
spair. I dared not leave Simla; and I knew that my stay
there was killing me. I knew, moreover, that it was my
destiny to die slowly and a little every day. My only
anxiety was to get the penance over as quietly as might
be. Alternately I hungered for a sight of Kitty and
watched her outrageous flirtations with my successor to
speak more accurately, my successors with amused
interest. She was as much out of my lite as I was out ot
hers. By day I wandered with Mrs. WessingtOD almost

UNDER THE DEODARS

content. By night I implored Heaven to let me return to
the world as I used to know it. Above all these varying
moods lay the sensation of dull, numbing wonder that the
seen and the Unseen should mingle so strangely on this
earth to hound one poor soul to its grave.

*fc *§• ^» 5}» *f* *jc »jc 5jC ^fc

August 27. — Heatherlegh has been indefatigable in his
attendance on me; and only yesterday told me that I
ought to send in an application for sick leave. An
application to escape the company of a phantom ! A re-
quest that the Government would graciously permit me
to get rid of five ghosts and an airy 'rickshaw by going t(
England ! Heatherlegh's proposition moved me to almost
hysterical laughter. I told him that I should await the
end quietly at Simla; and I am sure that the end is not far
off. Believe me that I dread its advent more than any
word can say; and I torture myself nightly with a thou-
sand speculations as to the manner of my death.

Shall I die in my bed decently and as an English gentle-
man should die; or, in one last walk on the Mall, will my
soul be wrenched from me to take its place for ever and
ever by the side of that ghastly phantasm? Shall I return
to my old lost allegiance in the next world, or shall I meet
Agnes loathing her and bound to her side through all
eternity? Shall we two hover over the scene of our lives
till the end of Time? As the day of my death draws
nearer, the intense horror that all living flesh feels towards
escaped spirits from beyond the grave grows more and
more powerful. It is an awful thing to go down quick
among the dead with scarcely one-half of your life com-
pleted. It is a thousand times more awful to wait as I do
in your midst, for I know not what unimaginable terror.
Pity me, at least on the score of my 'delusion,' for I know

THE PHANTOM 'RICKSHAW

you will never believe what I have written here. Yet as
surely as ever a man was done to death by the Powers of
Darkness, I am that man.

In justice, too, pity her. For as surely as ever woman
was killed by man, I killed Mrs. Wessington. And the
last portion of my punishment is even now upon me.

MY OWN TRUE GHOST STORY

As I came through the Desert thus it was —
As I came through the Desert.

The City of Dreadful Night.

This story deals entirely with ghosts. There are, in
India, ghosts who take the form of fat, cold, pobby corpses,
and hide in trees near the roadside till a traveller passes.
Then they drop upon his neck and remain. There are
also terrible ghosts of women who have died in childbed.
These wander along the pathway at dusk, or hide in the
crops near a village, and call seductively. But to answer
their call is death in this world and the next. Their feet
are turned backwards that all sober men may recognise
them. There are ghosts of little children who have been
thrown into wells. These haunt well-curbs and the
fringes of jungles, and wail under the stars, or catch
women by the wrist and beg to be taken up and carried.
These and the corpse-ghosts, however, are only vernacu-
lar articles and do not attack Sahibs. No native ghost has
yet been authentically reported to have frightened an
Englishman; but many English ghosts have scared the
life out of both white and black.

Nearly every other Station owns a ghost. There are
said to be two at Simla, not counting the woman who
blows the bellows at Syree dak-bungalow on the Old Road;
Mussoorie has a house haunted by a very lively Thing; a
White Lady is supposed to do night-watchman round a
house in Lahore; Dalhousie says that one of her houses

T40

MY OWN TRUE GHOST STORY 141

'repeats' on autumn evenings all the incidents of a horri-
ble horse-and-precipice accident; Murree has a merry
ghost, and, now that she has been swept by cholera, will
have room for a sorrowful one; there are Officers' Quarters
in Mian Mir whose doors open without reason, and whose
furniture is guaranteed to creak, not with the heat of June
but with the weight of Invisibles who come to lounge in
the chairs; Peshawur possesses houses that none will
willingly rent; and there is something — not fever— wrong
ivith a big bungalow in Allahabad. The older Provinces
simply bristle with haunted houses, and march phantom
armies along their main thoroughfares.

Some of the dak-bungalows on the Grand Trunk Road
have handy little cemeteries in their compound — wit-
nesses to the ' changes and chances of this mortal life' in
the days when men drove from Calcutta to the Northwest.
These bungalows are objectionable places to put up in.
They are generally very old, always dirty, while the khan-
samah is as ancient as the bungalow. He either chatters
senilely, or falls into the long trances of age. In both
Tioods he is useless. If you get angry with him, he refers
to some Sahib dead and buried these thirty years, and
says that when he was in that Sahib's service not a khan-
samah in the Province could touch him. Then he jabbers
and mows and trembles and fidgets among the dishes, and
you repent of your irritation.

Not long ago it was my business to live in dak-bun-
galows. I never inhabited the same house for three
nights running, and grew to be learned in the breed.
I lived in Government -built ones with red brick walls
and rail ceilings, an inventory of the furniture posted
in every room, and an excited cobra on the threshold
to give Welcome. I lived in 'converted' ones old
houses officiating as dak-bungalows — where nothing

142

UNDER THE DEODARS

was in its proper place and there was not even a fowl
for dinner. I lived in second-hand palaces where the
wind blew through open-work marble tracery just as
uncomfortably as through a broken pane. I lived in
dak-bungalows where the last entry in the visitors'
book was fifteen months old, and where they slashed
off the curry-kid's head with a sword. It was my good
luck to meet all sorts of men, from sober travelling
missionaries and deserters flying from British Regi-
ments, to drunken loafers who threw whiskey bottles
at all who passed; and my still greater good-fortune
just to escape a maternity case. Seeing that a fair pro-
portion of the tragedy of our lives in India acted itself
in dak-bungalows, I wondered that I had met no ghosts.
A ghost that would voluntarily hang about a dak-bun-
galow would be mad of course; but so many men have
died mad in dak-bungalows that there must be a fair
percentage of lunatic ghosts.

In due time I found my ghost, or ghosts rather, foi
there were two of them.

We will call the bungalow Katmal dak-bungalow;
but that was the smallest part of the horror. A man
with a sensitive hide has no right to sleep in dak-bun-
galows. He should marry. Katmal dak-bungalow was
old and rotten and unrepaired. The floor was of worn
brick, the walls were filthy, and the windows were
nearly black with grime. It stood on a bypath largely
used by native Sub-Deputy Assistants of all kinds,
from Finance to Forests; but real Sahibs were rare.
The khansamah, who was nearly bent double with old
age, said so.

When I arrived, there was a fitful, undecided rain
on the face of the land, accompanied by a restless wind,
and every gust made a noise like the rattling of dry

MY OWN TRUE GHOST STORY

143

bones in the stiff toddy-palms outside. The khansamah
completely lost his head on my arrival. He had served
a Sahib once. Did I know that Sahib? He gave me
the name of a well-known man who has been buried for
more than a quarter of a century, and showed me an
ancient daguerreotype of that man in his prehistoric
youth. I had seen a steel engraving of him at the head
of a double volume of Memoirs a month before, and I
felt ancient beyond telling.

The day shut in and the khansamah went to get me
food. He did not go through the pretence of calling it
'khana,' — man's victuals. He said 'ralub,' and that
means, among other things, 'grub' — dog's rations.
There was no insult in his choice of the term. He had
forgotten the other word, I suppose.

While he was cutting up the dead bodies of animals,
I settled myself down, after exploring the dak-bungalow.
There were three rooms, beside my own, which was a
corner kennel, each giving into the other through dingy
white doors fastened with long iron bars. The bungalow
was a very solid one, but the partition-walls of the rooms
were almost jerry-built in their fiimsiness. Every step
or bang of a trunk echoed from my room down the other
three, and every footfall came back tremulously frorr;
the far walls. For this reason I shut the door. Then
were no lamps — only candles in long glass shades. An
oil wick was set in the bathroom.

For bl^ak, unadulterated misery that dak-bungalow
was the worst of the many that I had ever set foot in.
There was no fireplace, and the windows would Hot
open; so a brazier of charcoal would have been use-
less. The rain and the wind splashed and gurgled and
moaned round the house, and the toddy-palms rattled
and roared. Half a dozen jackals went through the

144 UNDER THE DEODARS

compound singing, and a hyena stood afar off and
mocked them. A hyena would convince a Sadducee
of the Resurrection of the Dead — the worst sort of
Dead. Then came the ratub — a curious meal, half
native and half English in composition — with the old
khansamah babbling behind my chair about dead and
gone English people, and the wind-blown candles play-
ing shadow-bo-peep with the bed and the mosquito-
curtains. It was just the sort of dinner and evening
to make a man think of every single one of his past
sins, and of all the others that he intended to commit if
he lived.

Sleep, for several hundred reasons, was not easy.
The lamp in the bathroom threw the most absurd
shadows into the room, and the wind was beginning to
talk nonsense.

Just when the reasons were drowsy with blood-
sucking I heard the regular — 1 Let-us-take-and-heave-
him-over' grunt of doolie-bearers in the compound.
First one doolie came in, then a second, and then a
third. I heard the doolies dumped on the ground,
and the shutter in front of my door shook.

' That's some one trying to come in,' I said. But
no one spoke, and I persuaded myself that it was the
gusty wind. The shutter of the room next to mine
was attacked, flung back, and the inner door opened.
i That's some Sub-Deputy Assistant,' I said, 'and he
has brought his friends with him. Now they'll talk
and spit and smoke for an hour.'

But there were no voices and no footsteps. No one
was putting his luggage into the next room. The
door shut, and I thanked Providence that I was to be
left in peace. But I was curious to know where the
doolies had gone. I got out of bed and looked into the

MY OWN TRUE GHOST STORY

H5

darkness. There was never a sign of a doolie. Just as
T was getting into bed again, I heard, in the next room,
the sound that no man in his senses can possibly mistake
— the whir of a billiard ball down the length of the
slate when the striker is stringing for break. No other
sound is like it. A minute afterwards there was another
whir, and I got into bed. I was not frightened — indeed
I was not. I was very curious to know what had become
of the doolies. I jumped into bed for that reason.

Next minute I heard the double click of a cannon,
and my hair sat up. It is a mistake to say that hair
stands up. The skin of the head tightens and you
can feel a faint, prickly bristling all over the scalp.
That is the hair sitting up.

There was a whir and a click, and both sounds could
only have been made by one thing — a billiard ball.
I argued the matter out at great length with myself;
and the more I argued the less probable it seemed that
one bed, one table, and two chairs — all the furniture
")f the room next to mine — could so exactly duplicate
the sounds of a game of billiards. After another can-
non, a three-cushion one to judge by the whir, I argued
no more. I had found my ghost and would have given
worlds to have escaped from that dak-bungalow. I
listened, and with each listen the game grew clearer.
There was whir on whir and click on click. Sometimes
there was a double click and a whir and another click.
Beyond any sort of doubt, people were playing billiards
in the next room. And the next room was not big enough
to hold ;i billiard table!

Between the pauses of the wind I heard the game
go forward — stroke after stroke. I tried to believe
that I could not hear voices; but thai attempt was a
failure.

146 UNDER THE DEODARS

Do you know what fear is? Not ordinary fear of
insult, injury, or death, but abject, quivering dread of
something that you cannot see — fear that dries the in'
side of the mouth and half of the throat — fear that makes
you sweat on the palms of the hands, and gulp in order
to keep the uvula at work? This is a fine Fear — a
great cowardice, and must be felt to be appreciated.
The very improbability of billiards in a dak-bungalow
proved the reality of the. thing. No man — drunk or
sober — could imagine a game at billiards, or invent the
spitting crack of a ' screw cannon.'

A severe course of dak-bungalows has this disadvan-
tage— it breeds infinite credulity. If a man said to a
confirmed dak-bungalow-haunter: ' There is a corpse
in the next room, and there's a mad girl in the next
one, and the woman and man on that camel have just
eloped from a place sixty miles away,' the hearer would
not disbelieve because he would know that nothing is
too wild, grotesque, or horrible to happen in a dak-bun-
galow.

This credulity, unfortunately, extends to ghosts. A
rational person fresh from his own house would have
turned on his side and slept. I did not. So surely as
I was given up for a dry carcass by the scores of things
in the bed, because the bulk of my blood was in my
heart, so surely did I hear every stroke of a long game
at billiards played in the echoing room behind the iron-
barred door. My dominant fear was that the players
might want a marker. It was an absurd fear; because
creatures who could play in the dark would be above
such superfluities. I only know that that was my terror;
and it was real.

After a long, long while, the game stopped, and the
door banged. I slept because I was dead tired. Other-

MY OWN TRUE GHOST STORY

147

wise I should have preferred to have kept awake. Not
for everything in Asia would I have dropped the door-
bar and peered into the dark of the next room.

When the morning came, I considered that I had done
veil and wisely, and enquired for the means of departure.

'By the way, khansamah,' I said, 'what were those
three doolies doing in my compound in the night? '

'There were no doolies,' said the khansamah.

I went into the next room, and the daylight streamed
through the open door. I was immensely brave. I
would, at that hour, have played Black Pool with the
owner of the big Black Pool down below.

'Has this place always been a dak-bungalow? ' I asked.

'No,' said the khansamah. 'Ten or twenty years
ago, I have forgotten how long, it was a billiard-room.'

'A what?'

'A billiard-room for the Sahibs who built the Rail-
way. I was khansamah then in the big house where all
the Railway-Sahibs lived, and I used to come across
with hv&ndy-shrab. These three rooms were all one,
and they held a big table on which the Sahibs played
every evening. But the Sahibs are all dead now, and
the Railway runs, you say, nearly to Kabul.'

'Do you remember anything about the Sahibs?'

'It is long ago, but I remember thai one Sahib, a fat
man, and always angry, was playing here one night,
and he said to me: "Mangal Khan, brandy do"
^nd I filled the glass, and he bent over the table to
"trike, and his head fell lower and lower till il hit the
table, and his spectacles came off, and when we the
Sahibs and I myself — ran to lilt him he was dead. I
helped to carry him out. Aha, he was a strong Sahib!
But he is dead, and I, old Mangal Khan, am still living,
by your favour.'

148

UNDER THE DEODARS

That was more than enough! I had my ghost—
a first-hand, authenticated article. I would write to
the Society for Psychical Research — I would paralyse
the Empire with the news! But I would, first of all,
put eighty miles of assessed crop-land between myself
and that dak-bungalow before nightfall. The Society
might send their regular agent to investigate later on.

I went into my own room and prepared to pack, after
noting down the facts of the case. As I smoked I heard
the game begin again, — with a miss in balk this time,
for the whir was a short one.

The door was open, and I could see into the room.
Click — click ! That was a cannon. I entered the room
without fear, for there was sunlight within and a fresh
breeze without. The unseen game was going on at a
tremendous rate. And well it might, when a restless
little rat was running to and fro inside the dingy ceiling-
cloth, and a piece of loose window-sash was making
fifty breaks off the window-bolt as it shook in the
breeze !

Impossible to mistake the sound of billiard balls!
Impossible to mistake the whir of a ball over the slater
But I was to be excused. Even when I shut my enlight-
ened eyes the sound was marvellously like that of a fast
game.

Entered angrily the faithful partner of my sorrows,
Kadir Baksh.

'This bungalow is very bad and low-caste! No
wonder the Presence was disturbed and is speckled.
Three sets of doolie-bearers came to the bungalow late
last night when I was sleeping outside, and said that it
was their custom to rest in rooms set apart for the
English people ! What honour has the khansamah ? They
tried to enter, but I told them to go. No wonder? if these

MY OWN TRUE GHOST STORY

149

Oorias have been here, that the Presence is sorely spotted.
It is shame, and the work of a dirty man! '

Kadir Baksh did not say that he had taken from each
gang two annas for rent in advance, and then, beyond my
earshot, had beaten them with the big green umbrella
whose use I could never before divine. But Kadir Baksh
has no notions of morality.

There was an interview with the khansamah, but as he
promptly lost his head, wrath gave place to pity, and pity
led to a long conversation, in the course of which he put
the fat Engineer-Sahib's tragic death in three separate
stations — two of them fifty miles away. The third shift
was to Calcutta, and there the Sahib died while driving a
dog-cart.

I did not go away as soon as I intended. I stayed for
the night, while the wind and the rat and the sash and the
window-bolt played a ding-dong 'hundred and fifty up.'
Then the wind ran out and the billiards stopped, and I
felt that I had ruined my one geniune ghost story.

Had I only ceased investigating at the proper time, I
could have made anything out of it.

That was the bitterest thought of all!

THE TRACK OF A LIE1

Consequences of our acts eternal? Bosh!' said
Blawkins, at the Club. 'That's what the Padres say.
See, now!' The smoking room was empty, except for
Blawkins and myself. 1 I'll tell you an idiotic little super-
stition I picked up the other day,' said he. 'The natives
say that Allah allows the tiger one rupee eight annas a
day for his food; and if you total up the month's cattle
bill of an average tiger, not a man-eater, you'll find that
it's exactly forty-five rupees per mensem.'

' 1 know that,' said I. 'And it happens to be true.'

'Very good,' said Blawkins. 'Do you mean to say thai
anything is going to come of an idle sentence like that? 1
say it. You hear it. Well? ' Blawkins swung out of the
Club, leaving me vanquished.

But the statement rang in my head. There was some-
thing catching about the words, 'Allah allows the tiger
one rupee eight annas a day for his food.' It was a quaint
superstition, and one not generally known. Would the
local paper care for it? It fitted a corner, empty for the
moment; and one or two readers said, 'What a curious
idea!'

That the tiny paragraph should have wandered to
Southern India was not very strange, though there was no
reason why it should not have trickled to the Bombay
side, instead of dropping straight as a plummet to Madras.
That it should have jumped Adam's Bridge, and been

^Copyright, 1895, by Macmillan & Co.
I5<?

THE TRACK OF A LIE

copied in a Ceylon journal, was strange; but Blawkins had
^een transferred to the other end of the Empire, just two
lays before the Ceylon papers told their cinchona plant-
ers that ' Allah allows the tiger one rupee eight annas a
day,' etc.

Three weeks passed, and from the eastern side of the
Bay of Bengal came in the Burma mail. Boh Ottima was
dead, and the Field Force was hard worked; Mandalay
was suffering from cholera, but at the bottom of the last
page the rest of the. world might read that ' Allah allows
the tiger,' etc. Blawkins was on duty in the Bolan, very
sick with fever. It was not worth while to follow him
with a letter.

Week by week Europe grew to be a hornet-hive, throb-
bing and humming angrily, as the messages pulsed
mrough the wires. Then Singapur reported that 'Allah
allows the tiger,' etc. Here, assuredly, was the limit of
my paragraph's wandering. It might struggle into the
Malayan Archipelago, but beyond that scattered heap of
islands it could not pass.

Germany called for more men; France answered the
call with fresh battalions on her side; and the strangely
scented, straw-hued journals of Shanghai and Yokohama
made public to the Far East the news that 'Allah allows
the tiger,' etc. Blawkins, now at Poona, was desperately
in love with a Miss Blandyre. What were paragraphs to
a passionate lover? I never sent him a line, though lu-
bombarded me with a very auctioneer's catalogue of Miss
Blandyre's charms. What would my paragraph do? It
had reached the open Pacific now, and must surely drown
in five thousand miles of black water. Alter all, it had
lived long.

Yet, I .had presentiments, and waited anxiously for
what might come. The Hying keel stayed at the Golden

UNDER THE DEODARS

Gate, where the sea-lions romp and gurgle and bask: Eu-
rope shook with the tread of armed men, but — where was
my paragraph? In America — for San Francisco wished
to know, if 'Allah allowed the tiger,' etc., how much a Los
Angeles hotel-keeper would be justified in charging a
millionaire with delirium tremens ? Would Eastern Amer-
ica accept it? The paragraph touched Salt Lake City;
and thenceforward, straight as a homeward-bound bee,
headed New York-wards. They took it ; they cut, chipped,
chopped, laughed; were ribald, pious, profane, cynical,
and frankly foolish over it; but, as though it were under a
special and mysterious protection of Providence, it re-
turned, always, to its original shape. It ran southward
into New Orleans, northward to Toronto; and week after
week the weather-beaten exchanges recorded its eastward
progress. Boston appreciated it as something perfectly
original; and at last, as a lone light dies on an extreme
headland, Philadelphia sent back the news that the
Emperor William was dead, and 'Allah allows the tiger,'
etc. But Blawkins had, long ago, wedded Miss Blandyre.
What was the use of writing to him? The main point of
existence was, whether the paragraph could come over the
Atlantic to the West Coast of England, where the country
papers were lichened with the growth of local politics.

There was a long pause, and I feared that my paragraph
was dead. But I did it an injustice. Over the foaming
surf of the local Government Bill, through the rapids of
compensation to publicans, in the teeth of the current of
Mr. Gladstone's appeals to the free and enlightened
electors of Wales, came my paragraph — for Birmingham
found room for the announcement that 'Allah allows the
tiger,' etc. Blawkins sent an announcement also. It cost
him two rupees, was a purely local matter, and ended up
with the words 'of a son.' But the paragraph was Im-

THE TRACK OF A LIE 153

perial — nay, Universal. I felt safe, for there was one
journal in London whom nothing unusual, or alas, unclean,
ever escaped. I waited with confidence the arrival of the
Yellow Wrapper. When the mails came in, the Bombay
papers had already quoted and commended to the notice
of the Bombay Zoological Society the curious statement
hailing from England in the Yellow Wrapper that ' Allah
allows the tiger,' etc.! The circuit was complete; and as
the shears snipped out the announcement, before putting
it afresh into the very cradle in which it had been born
fifteen months and six days before, I felt that I had shaken
hands with the whole round world. My paragraph had
come home indeed !

Tenderly as a mother shows the face of her sleeping
child, I led Blawkins through the paper-cuttings, and
step by step pointed out the path of the paragraph. His
lower jaw dropped. ' By Jove ! ' said he, ' I was wrong — it
should have been a rupee — one rupee only — not one
eight.'

'Then, Blawkins,' said I, 'you have swindled the whole
wide world of the sum of eight annas,' nominally one
shilling.

THE STRANGE RIDE OF MORROWBIE JUKES

Alive or dead — there is no other way. — Native Proverb.

There is no invention about this tale. Jukes by
accident stumbled upon a village that is well known to
exist, though he is the only Englishman who has been
there. A somewhat similar institution used to flourish on
the outskirts of Calcutta, and there is a story that if you
go into the heart of Bikanir, which is in the heart of the
Great Indian Desert, you shall come across not a village
but a town where the Dead who did not die but may not
live have established their headquarters. And, since it is
perfectly true that in the same Desert is a wonderful city
where all the rich money-lenders retreat after they have
made their fortunes (fortunes so vast that the owners can-
not trust even the strong hand of the Government to pro-
tect them, but take refuge in the waterless sands), and
drive sumptuous C-spring barouches, and buy beautiful
girls and decorate their palaces with gold and ivory and
Minton tiles and mother-o '-pearl, I do not see why
Jukes's tale should not be true. He is a Civil Engineer,
with a head for plans and distances and things of that
kind, and he certainly would not take the trouble to in-
vent imaginary traps. He could earn more by doing his
legitimate work. He never varies the tale in the telling,
and grows very hot and indignant when he thinks of the
disrespectful treatment he received. He wrote this quite
straightforwardly at first, but he has touched it up in
places and introduced Moral Reflections: thus: —

154

THE STRANGE RIDE

155

In the beginning it all arose from a slight attack of
fever. My work necessitated my being in camp for some
months between Pakpattan and Mubarakpur — a desolate
sandy stretch of country as every one who has had the
misfortune to go there may know. My coolies were
neither more nor less exasperating than other gangs, and
my work demanded sufficient attention to keep me from
moping, had I been inclined to so unmanly a weakness.

On the 23rd December, 1884, I felt a little feverish.
There was a full moon at the time, and, in consequence,
every dog near my tent was baying it. The brutes
assembled in twos and threes and drove me frantic. A few
days previously I had shot one loud-mouthed singer and
suspended his carcass in terrorem about fifty yards from
my tent-door, but his friends fell upon, fought for, and
ultimately devoured the body: and, as it seemed to me,
sang their hymns of thanksgiving afterwards with re-
newed energy.

The light-headedness which accompanies fever acts
differently on different men. My irritation gave way, after
a short time, to a fixed determination to slaughter one
huge black and white beast who had been foremost in
song and first in flight throughout the evening. Thanks to
a shaking hand and a giddy head I had already missed
him twieewith both barrels of my shot-gun, when it st ruck
me that my best plan would be to ride him down in the
open and finish him off with a hog-spear. This, of course,
was merely the semi-delirious notion of a fever-patient;
but I remember that it struek me at the time as being
eminently practical and feasible.

I therefore ordered my groom to saddle Pornie and
bring him round quietly to the real' of my tent. When the
pony was ready, 1 stood at his head prepared to mount and
dash out as soon as the dog should again lift up his voice.

156

UNDER THE DEODARS

Pornic, by the way, had not been out of his pickets for a
couple of days; the night air was crisp and chilly; and I
was armed with a specially long and sharp pair of per-
suaders with which I had been rousing a sluggish cob that
afternoon. You will easily believe, then, that when he
was let go he went quickly. In one moment, for the
brute bolted as straight as a die, the tent was left far be-
hind, and we were flying over the smooth sandy soil at
racing speed. In another we had passed the wretched dog,
and I had almost forgotten why it was that I had taken
horse and hog-spear.

The delirium of fever and the excitement of rapid mo-
tion through the air must have taken away the remnant
of my senses. I have a faint recollection of standing up-
right in my stirrups, and of brandishing my hog-spear at
the great white Moon that looked down so calmly on my
mad gallop ; and of shouting challenges to the camelthorn
bushes as they whizzed past. Once or twice, I believe, I
swayed forward on Pontic's neck, and literally hung on by
my spurs — as the marks next morning showed.

The wretched beast went forward like a thing pos-
sessed, over what seemed to be a limitless expanse of
moonlit sand. Next, I remember, the ground rose sud-
denly in front of us, and as we topped the ascent I saw the
waters of the Sutlej shining like a silver bar below. Then
Pornic blundered heavily on his nose, and we rolled to-
gether down some unseen slope.

I must have lost consciousness, for when I recovered I
was lying on my stomach in a heap of soft white sand, and
the dawn was beginning to break dimly over the edge of
the slope down which I had fallen. As the light grew
stronger I saw I was at the bottom of a horseshoe-shaped
crater of sand, opening on one side directly on to the
shoals of the Sutlej. My fever had altogether left me,

THE STRANGE RIDE

*57

and, with the exception of a slight dizziness in the head, I
r2lt no bad effects from the fall over night.

Pornic, who was standing a few yards away, was
naturally a good deal exhausted, but had not hurt him-
self in the least. His saddle, a favourite polo one, was
much knocked about, and had been twisted under his
belly. It took me some time to put him to rights, and in
the meantime I had ample opportunities of observing the
spot into which I had so foolishly dropped.

At the risk of being considered tedious, I must describe
it at length; inasmuch as an accurate mental picture of its
peculiarities will be of material assistance in enabling the
reader to understand what follows.

Imagine then, as I have said before, a horseshoe-shaped
crater of sand with steeply-graded sand walls about
thirty-five feet high. (The slope, I fancy, must have
been about 65°.) This crater enclosed a level piece of
ground about fifty yards long by thirty at its broadest
part, with a rude well in the centre. Round the bottom
of the crater, about three feet from the level of the ground
proper, ran a series of eighty-three semicircular, ovoid,
square, and multilateral holes, all about three feet at the
mouth. Each hole on inspection showed that it was care-
fully shored internally with drift-wood and bamboos, and
over the mouth a wooden drip-board projected, like the
peak of a jockey's cap, for two feet. No sign of life was
visible in these tunnels, but a most sickening stench per-
vaded the entire amphitheatre — a stench fouler than any
which my Wanderings in Indian villages have introduced
me to.

Having remounted Pornic, who was as anxious as I to
get back to camp, I rode round the base of the horseshoe
to find some place whence an exit would be practicable.
The inhabitants, whoever tlyy might be, had not though 1

UNDER THE DEODARS

fit to put in an appearance, so I was left to my own de-
vices. My first attempt to ' rush' Pornic up the steep
sand-banks showed me that I had fallen into a trap
exactly on the same model as that which the ant-lion sets
for its prey. At each step the shifting sand poured down
from above in tons, and rattled on the drip-boards of the
holes like small shot. A couple of ineffectual charges sent
us both rolling down to the bottom, half choked with the
torrents of sand; and I was constrained to turn my atten-
tion to the river-bank.

Here everything seemed easy enough. The sand hills
ran down to the river edge, it is true, but there were
plenty of shoals and shallows across which I could gallop
Pornic, and find my way back to terra firma by turning
sharply to the right or the left. As I led Pornic over the
sands I was startled by the faint pop of a rifle across the
river; and at the same moment a bullet dropped with a
sharp 'whit' close to Pornic's head.

There was no mistaking the nature of the missile — a
regulation Martini-Henry 'picket.' About five hundred
yards away a country-boat was anchored in midstream ;
and a jet of smoke drifting away from its bows in the
still morning air showed me whence the delicate atten-
tion had come. Was ever a respectable gentleman in
such an impasse ? The treacherous sand slope allowed no
escape from a spot which I had visited most involuntarily,
and a promenade on the river frontage was the signal for a
bombardment from some insane native in a boat. I'm
afraid that I lost my temper very much indeed.

Another bullet reminded me that I had better save my
breath to cool my porridge ; and I retreated hastily up the
sands and back to the horseshoe, where I saw that the
noise of the rifle had drawn sixty-five human beings from
the badger-holes which I had up till that point supposed

THE STRANGE RIDE

to be untenanted. I found myself in the midst of a crowd
of spectators — about forty men, twenty women, and one
child who could not have been more than five years old.
They were all scantily clothed in that salmon coloured
cloth which one associates with Hindu mendicants, and,
at first sight, gave me the impression of a band of loath-
some fakirs. The filth and repulsiveness of the assembly
were beyond all description, and I* shuddered to think
what their life in the badger-holes must be.

Even in these days, when local self-government has de-
stroyed the greater part of a native's respect for a Sahib,
I have been accustomed to a certain amount of civility
from my inferiors, and on approaching the crowd natu-
rally expected that there would be some recognition of my
presence. As a matter of fact there was; but it was by
no means what I had looked for.

The ragged crew actually laughed at me — such
laughter I hope I may never hear again. They cackled,
yelled, whistled, and howled as I walked into their midst;
some of them literally throwing themselves down on the
ground in convulsions of unholy mirth. In a moment I
had let go Pornic's head, and, irritated beyond expression
at the morning's adventure, commenced cuffing those
nearest to me with all the force I could. The wretches
dropped under my blows like nine-pins, and the laughter
gave place to wails for mercy; while those yet untouched
clasped me round the knees, imploring me in all sorts of
uncouth tongues to spare them.

In the tomult, and just when I was feeling very much
ashamed of myself for having thus easily given way to
my temper, a thin, high voice murmured in Knglish from
behind my shoulder: ' Sahib! Sahib! Do you not know
me? Sahib, it is (iunga Dass, the telegraph-master.'

I snun round quickly and faced the speaker.

i

i6o

UNDER THE DEODARS

Gunga Dass (I have, of course, no hesitation in men-
tioning the man's real name) I had known four years
before as a Deccanee Brahmin lent by the Punjab Gov-
ernment to one of the Khalsia States. He was in charge
of a branch telegraph-office there, and when I had las'/
met him was a jovial, full-stomached, portly Government
servant with a marvellous capacity for making bad puns
in English — a peculiarity which made me remember
him long after I had forgotten his services to me in
his official capacity. It is seldom that a Hindu makes
English puns.

Now, however, the man was changed beyond all recog-
nition. Caste-mark, stomach, slate-coloured continua-
tions, and unctuous speech were all gone. I looked at a
withered skeleton, turbanless and almost naked, with
long matted hair and deep-set codfish-eyes. But for a
crescent-shaped scar on the left cheek — the result of an
accident for which I was responsible — I should never
have known him. But it was indubitably Gunga Dass,
and — for this I was thankful — an English-speaking
native who might at least tell me the meaning of all
that I had gone through that day.

The crowd retreated to some distance as I turned
towards the miserable figure, and ordered him to show
me some method of escaping from the crater. He held
a freshly-plucked crow in his hand, and in reply to my
question climbed slowly on a platform of sand which
ran in front of the holes, and commenced lighting a fire
there in silence. Dried bents, sand-poppies, and drift-
wood burn quickly; and I derived much consolation
from the fact that he lit them with an ordinary sulphur
match. When they were in a bright glow, and the crow
was neatly spitted in front thereof, Gunga Dass began
without a word of preamble: —

THE STRANGE RIDE

161

'There are only two kinds of men, Sar. The alive
and the dead. When you are dead you are dead, but
when you are alive you live.' (Here the crow de-
manded his attention for an instant as it twirled before
the fire in danger of being burnt to a cinder.) 'If you
die at home and do not die when you come to the ghat
to be burnt you come here.'

The nature of the reeking village was made plain
now, and all that I had known or read of the grotesque
and the horrible paled before the fact just communi-
cated by the ex-Brahmin. Sixteen years ago, when I
first landed in Bombay, I had been told by a wandering
Armenian of the existence, somewhere in India, of a
place to which such Hindus as had the misfortune to
recover from trance or catalepsy were conveyed and
kept, and I recollect laughing heartily at what I was
then pleased to consider a traveller's talc. Sitting at
the bottom of the sand-trap, the memory of Watson's
Hotel, with its swinging punkahs, white-robed servants
and the sallow-faced Armenian, rose up in my mind as
vividly as a photograph, and I burst into a loud fit of
laughter. The contrast was too absurd!

Gunga Dass, as he bent over the unclean bird, watched
me curiously. Hindus seldom laugh, and his sur-
roundings were not such as to move him thai way. He
removed the crow solemnly from the wooden spit and
as solemnly devoured it. Then he continued his story,
which I give in his own words: —

'In epidemics of the (holera you are tarried to be
burnt almost before you are dead. When you Come to
the riverside the told air, perhaps, makes you alive,
and then, if you arc only little alive, mud is put 00
your nose and mouth and you die conclusively. If you
are rather more alive, more mud is put; but if you arc

i

l62

UNDER THE DEODARS

too lively they let you go and take you away. I was
too lively, and made protestation with anger against
the indignities that they endeavoured to press upon me,
In those days I was Brahmin and proud man. Now I
am dead man and eat' — here he eyed the well-gnawed
breast bone with the first sign of emotion that I had
seen in him since we met — 'crows, and — other things.
They took me from my sheets when, they saw that I
was too lively and gave me medicines for one week,
and I survived successfully. Then they sent me by
rail from my place to Okara Station, with a man to
take care of me; and at Okara Station we met two other
men, and they conducted we three on camels, in the
night, from Okara Station to this place, and they pro-
pelled me from the top to the bottom, and the other
two succeeded, and I have been here ever since two
and a half years. Once I was Brahmin and proud man
and now I eat crows.'

' There is no way of getting out?'

'None of what kind at all. When I first came I
made experiments frequently and all the others also,
but we have always succumbed to the sand which is
precipitated upon our heads.'

'But surely,' I broke in at this point, 'the river-front
is open, and it is worth while dodging the bullets; while
at night '

I had already matured a rough plan of escape which
a natural instinct of selfishness forbade me sharing
with Gunga Dass. He, however, divined my unspoken
thought almost as soon as it was formed; and, to my
intense astonishment, gave vent to a long low chuckle
of derision — the laughter, be it understood, of a supe-
rior or at least of an equal.

'You will not' — he had dropped the Sir after his

THE STRANGE RIDE

163

first sentence — 'make any escape that way. But you
can try. I have tried. Once only.'

The sensation of nameless terror which I had in
vain attempted to strive against, overmastered me com-
pletely. My long fast — it was now close upon ten
o'clock, and I had eaten nothing since tiffin on the pre-
vious day — combined with the violent agitation of the
ride had exhausted me, and I verily believe that, for a
few minutes, I acted as one mad. I hurled myself
against the sand-slope. I ran round the base of the
crater, blaspheming and praying by turns. I crawled
out among the sedges of the river-front, only to be
driven back each time in an agony of nervous dread by
the rifle-bullets which cut up the sand round me — for
I dared not face the death of a mad dog among that
hideous crowd — and so fell, spent and raving, at the
curb of the well. No one had taken the slightest notice
of an exhibition which makes me blush hotly even when
I think of it now.

Two or three men trod on my panting body as they
drew water, but they were evidently used to this sort
Df thing, and had no time to waste upon me. Gunga
Dass, indeed, when he had banked the embers of his
fire with sand, was at some pains to throw half a cupful
of fetid water over my head, an attention for which I
could have fallen on my knees and thanked him, but
he was lgjughing all the while in the same mirthless,
wheezy key that greeted me on my first attempt to
force the shoals. And so, in a half -fain ting state, I
lay till noon. Then, being only a man alter all, 1 felt
hungry, and said as much to Gunga Dass, whom I had
begun to regard as my natural protector. Following
the impulse of the outer world when dealing with na-
tives, J put my hand into my pocket and drew out four

UNDER THE DEODARS

annas: The absurdity of the gift struck me at once,
and I was about to replace the money.

Gunga Dass, however, cried: 'Give me the money,
all you have, or I will get help, and we will kill you ! '

A Briton's first impulse, I believe, is to guard the
contents of his pockets; but a moment's thought showed
me of the folly of differing with the one man who had
it in his power to make me comfortable ; and with, whose
help it was possible that I might eventually escape from
the crater. I gave him all the money in my possession,
Rs. .9-8-5 — nine rupees, eight annas, and five pie — for
I always keep small change as bakshish when I am in
camp. Gunga Dass clutched the coins, and hid them at
once in his ragged loin-cloth, looking round to assure
himself that no one had observed us.

'Now I will give you something to eat,' said he.

What pleasure my money could have given him I am
unable to say; but inasmuch a^ it did please him I
was not sorry that I had parted with it so readily, for
I had no doubt that he would have had me killed if I
had refused. One does not protest against the doings
of a den of wild beasts; and my companions were lowei
than any beasts. While I eat what Gunga Dass had
provided, a coarse chapatti and a cupful of the foul
well-water, the people showed not the faintest sign of
curiosity — that curiosity which is so rampant, as a
rule, in an Indian village.

I could even fancy that they despised me. At all
events they treated me with the most chilling indiffer-
ence, and Gunga Dass was nearly as bad. I plied him
with questions about the terrible village, and received ex-
tremely unsatisfactory answers. So far as I could gather,
it had been in existence from time immemorial — whence
X concluded that it was at least a century old — and

THE STRANGE RIDE

165

during that time no one had ever been known to escape
from it. [I had to control myself here with both hands,
lest the blind terror should lay hold of me a second
time and drive me raving round the crater.] Gunga
Dass took a malicious pleasure in emphasising this point
and in watching me wince. Nothing that I could do
would induce him to tell me who the mysterious 'They'
were.

'It is so ordered/ he would reply, 'and I do not yet
know any one who has disobeyed the orders.'

'Only wait till my servant finds that I am missing,'
I retorted, 'and I promise you that this place shall be
cleared off the face of the earth, and I'll give you a
lesson in civility, too, my friend.'

'Your servants would be torn in pieces before they
came near this place; and, besides, you are dead, my
dear friend. It is not your fault, of course, but none
the less you are dead and buried.'

At irregular intervals supplies of food, I was told,
were dropped down from the land side into the amphi-
theatre, and the inhabitants fought for them like wild
beasts. When a man felt his death coming on he re-
treated to his lair and died there. The body was some-
times dragged out of the hole and thrown on to the sand,
or allowed to rot where it lay.

The phrase 'thrown on to the sand' caught my atten-
tion, and i asked Gunga Dass whether this sort of thing
was »not likely to breed a pestilence.

'That,' said he, with another of his wheezy chuckles,
'you may sec for yourself subsequently. You will have
much time to make observations.'

Whereat, to liis great delight, I winced once more and
hastily continued the conversation: 'And how do you
live here from day to day? What do you do?' The

i66

UNDER THE DEODARS

question elicited exactly the same answer as before — ■
coupled with the information that 'this place is like
your European heaven; there is neither marrying nor
giving in marriage. '

Gunga Dass had been educated at a Mission School,
and, as he himself admitted, had he only changed his
religion 'like a wise man/ might have avoided the liv-
ing grave which was now his portion. But as long as I
was with him I fancy he was happy.

Here was a Sahib, a representative of the dominant
race, helpless as a child and completely at the mercy of
his native neighbours. In a deliberate lazy way he set
himself to torture me as a schoolboy would devote a
rapturous half-hour to watching the agonies of an im-
paled beetle, or as a ferret in a blind burrow might
glue himself comfortably to the neck of a rabbit. The
burden of his conversation was that there was no escape
'of no kind whatever,' and that I should stay here till I
died and was ' thrown on to the sand.' If it were possible
to forejudge the conversation of the Damned on the
advent of a new soul in their abode, I should say that
they would speak as Gunga Dass did to me throughout
that long afternoon. I was powerless to protest or
answer; all my energies being devoted to a struggle
against the inexplicable terror that threatened to over-
whelm me again and again. I can compare the feel-
ing to nothing except the struggles of a man against
the overpowering nausea of the Channel passage —
only my agony was of the spirit and infinitely more
terrible.

As the day wore on, the inhabitants began to appear
in full strength to catch the rays of the afternoon sun,
which were now sloping in at the mouth of the crater.
They assembled by little knots, and talked among them-

THE STRANGE RIDE

167

selves without even throwing a glance in my direction.
About four o'clock, so far as I could judge, Gunga Dass
rose and dived into his lair for a moment, emerging with
a live crow in his hands. The wretched bird was in a
most draggled and deplorable condition, but seemed to
be in no way afraid of its master. Advancing cau-
tiously to the river-front, Gunga Dass stepped from
tussock to tussock until he had reached a smooth patch
of sand directly in the line of the boat's fire. The oc-
cupants of the boat took no notice. Here he stopped,
and, with a couple of dexterous turns of the wrist,
pegged the bird on its back with outstretched wings.
As was only natural, the crow began to shriek at once
and beat the air with its claws. In a few seconds the
clamour had attracted the attention of a bevy of wild
crows on a shoal a few hundred yards away, where
they were discussing something that looked like a
corpse. Half a dozen crows flew over at once to see
what was going on, and also, as it proved, to attack the
pinioned bird. Gunga Dass, who had lain down on a
tussock, motioned to me to be quiet, though I fancy
this was a needless precaution. In a moment, and
before I could sec how it happened, a wild crow, who
had grappled with the shrieking and helpless bird, was
entangled in the latter's claws, swiftly disengaged by
Gunga Dass, and pegged down beside its companion in
adversity. 0 Curiosity, it seemed, overpowered the rest
of the flocfe, and almost before Gunga Dass and I had
time to withdraw to the tussock, two more captives were
struggling in the upturned claws of the decoys. So the
chase — if I can give it so dignified a name continued
until Gunga Dass had captured seven crows. Five of
them he throttled at once, reserving two for further
operations another day. I was a good deal impressed

UNDER THE DEODARS

by this, to me, novel method of securing food, and com-
plimented Gunga Dass on his skill.

'It is nothing to do/ said he. ' To-morrow you must
do it for me. You are stronger than I am.'

This calm assumption of superiority upset me not a
little, and I answered peremptorily: 'Indeed, you old
ruffian? What do you think I have given you money
for?'

'Very well,' was the unmoved reply. 'Perhaps not
to-morrow, nor the day after, nor subsequently; but in
the end, and for many years, you will catch crows and
eat crows, and you will thank your European God that
you have crows to catch and eat.'

I could have cheerfully strangled him for this; but
judged it best under the circumstances to smother my
resentment. An hour later I was eating one of the
crows; and, as Gunga Dass had said, thanking my
God that I had a crow to eat. Never as long as I live
shall I forget that evening meal. The whole population
were squatting on the hard sand platform opposite their
dens, huddled over tiny fires of refuse and dried rushes.
Death, having once laid his hand upon these men and
forborne to strike, seemed to stand aloof from them
now; for most of our company were old men, bent and
worn and twisted with years, and women aged to all
appearance as the Fates themselves. They sat to-
gether in knots and talked — God only knows what
they found to discuss — in low equable tones, curiously
in contrast to the strident babble with which natives are
accustomed to make day hideous. Now and then an
access of that sudden fury which had possessed me in
the morning would lay hold on a man or woman; and
with yells and imprecations the sufferer would attack the
steep slope until, baffled and bleeding, he fell back on the

THE STRANGE RIDE

169

platform incapable of moving a limb. The others would
never even raise their eyes when this happened, as men
too well aware of the futility of their fellows' attempts
and wearied with their useless repetition. I saw four
such outbursts in the course of that evening.

Gunga Dass took an eminently business-like view of
my situation, and while we were dining — I can afford
to laugh at the recollection now, but it was painful
enough at the time —propounded the terms of which
he would consent to 'do' for me. My nine rupees
eight annas, he argued, at the rate of three annas a
day, would provide me with food for fifty-one days,
or about seven weeks; that is to say, he would be willing
to cater for me for that length of time. At the end of it
I was to look after myself. For a further consideration
—videlicet my boots — he would be willing to allow me
to occupy the den next to his own, and would supply
me with as much dried grass for bedding as he could spare.

'Very well, Gunga Dass,' I replied; 'to the first terms
I cheerfully agree, but, as there is nothing on earth to
prevent my killing you as you sit here and taking every-
thing that you have' (I thought of the two invaluable4
crows at the time), 'I flatly refuse to give you my boots
and shall take whichever den I please.'

The stroke was a bold one, and I was glad when I saw
that it had succeeded. Gunga Dass changed his tone
immediately, and disavowed all intention of asking for
my bjOots. .At the time it did not strike me as at all
strange that I, a Civil Engineer, a man of thirteen
years' standing in the Service, and, I trust, an average
Englishman, should thus calmly threaten murder and
violence against the man who had, for a consideration
it is true, taken me under his wing. I had left the
world, it seemed, for centuries. I was as certain then

r V

170

UNDER THE DEODARS

as I am now of my own existence, that in the accursed
settlement there was no law save that of the strongest;
that the living dead men had thrown behind them
every canon of the world which had cast them out;
and that I had to depend for my own life on my strength
and vigilance alone. The crew of the ill-fated Mignonette
are the only men who would understand my frame of
mind. 1 At present/ I argued to myself, 1 1 am strong and
a match for six of these wretches. It is imperatively
necessary that I should, for my own sake, keep both
health and strength until the hour of my release comes —
if it ever does.'

Fortified with these resolutions, I ate and drank as
much as I could, and made Gunga Dass understand
that I intended to be his master, and that the least sign
of insubordination on his part would be visited with the
only punishment I had it in my power to inflict — sud-
den and violent death. Shortly after this I went to
bed. That is to say, Gunga Dass gave me a double
armful of dried bents which I thrust down the mouth
of the lair' to the right of his, and followed myself, feet
foremost; the hole running about nine feet into the
sand with a slight downward inclination, and being
neatly shored with timbers. From my den, which faced
the river-front, I was able to watch the waters of the
Sutlej flowing past under the light of a young mooi;
and compose myself to sleep as best I might.

The horrors of that night I shall never forget. My
den was nearly as narrow as a coffin, and the sides had
been worn smooth and greasy by the contact of innu-
merable naked bodies, added to which it smelt abomi-
nably. Sleep was altogether out of the question to one
in my excited frame of mind. As the night wore on,
it seemed that the entire amphitheatre was filled with

THE STRANGE RIDE

171

legions of unclean devils that, trooping up from the
shoals below, mocked the unfortunates in their lairs.

Personally I am not of an imaginative temperament
— very few Engineers are — but on that occasion I was
as completely prostrated with nervous terror as any
woman. After half an hour or so, however, I was able
once more to calmly review my chances of escape.- Any
exit by the steep sand walls was, of course, impractica-
ble. I had been thoroughly convinced of this some
time before. It was possible, just possible, that I might,
in the uncertain moonlight, safely run the gauntlet of the
rifle shots. The place was so full of terror for me that
I was prepared to undergo any risk in leaving it. Im-
agine my delight, then, when after creeping stealthilv
to the river-front I found that the infernal boat was not
there. My freedom lay before me in the next few steps !

By walking out to the first shallow pool that lay at
the foot of the projecting left horn of the horseshoe, I
could wade across, turn the flank of the crater, and make
my way inland. Without a moment's hesitation J
marched briskly past the tussocks where Gunga Dass
had snared the crows, and out in the direction of the
smooth white sand beyond. My first step from the
tufts of dried grass showed me how utterly futile was
any hope of escape; for, as I put my foot down, I felt
an indescribable drawing, sucking motion of the sand
below. ATiothcr moment and my leg was swallowed
up nearly to the knee. In the moonlight the whole
surface of the sand seemed to be shaken with devilish
delight at my disappointment. I struggled clear, sweat-
ing with terror and exertion, back to the tussocks behind
me and fell on my fate.

My only means of escape from the semicircle was pro-
tected with a quicksand!

UNDER THE DEODARS

How long I lay I have not the faintest idea; but I
was roused at the last by the malevolent chuckle of
Gunga Dass at my ear. 'I would advise you, Protec-
tor of the Poor' (the ruffian was speaking English) 'to
return to your house. It is unhealthy to He down
here. Moreover, when the boat returns, you will most
certainly be rifled at.' He stood over me in the dim
light of the dawn, chuckling and laughing to himself.
Suppressing my first impulse to catch the man by the
neck and throw him on to the quicksand, I rose sullenly
and followed him to the platform below the burrows.

Suddenly, and futilely as I thought while I spoke, I
asked: 'Gunga Dass, what is the good of the boat if
I can't get out anyhow ? ' I recollect that even in my
deepest trouble I had been speculating vaguely on the
waste of ammunition in guarding an already well pro-
tected foreshore.

Gunga Dass laughed again and made answer: 'They
have the boat only in daytime. It is for the reason
that there is a way. I hope we shall have the pleasure
of your company for much longer time. It is a pleas
ant spot when you have been here some years and eaten
roast crow long enough.'

I staggered, numbed and helpless, towards the fetid
burrow allotted to me, and fell asleep. An hour or so
later I was awakened by a piercing scream — the shrill,
high-pitched scream of a horse in pain. Those who
have once heard that will never forget the sound. I
found some little difficulty in scrambling out of the
burrow. When I was in the open, I saw Pornic, my poor
old Pornic, lying dead on the sandy soil. How they had
killed him I cannot guess. Gunga Dass explained that
horse was better than crow, and 'greatest good of great-
est number is political maxim. We are now Republic,.

THE STRANGE RIDE

173

Mister Jukes, and you are entitled to a fair share of the
beast. If you like we will pass a vote of thanks. Shall
I propose?'

Yes, we were a Republic indeed! A Republic of wild
beasts penned at the bottom of a pit, to eat and fight
and sleep till we died. I attempted no protest of any
kind, but sat down and stared at the hideous sight in
front of me. In less time almost than it takes me to
write this, Pornic's body was divided, in some unclean
way or other; the men and women had dragged the
fragments on to the platform and were preparing their
morning meal. Gunga Dass cooked mine. The almost
irresistible impulse to fly at the sand walls until I was
wearied laid hold of me afresh, and I had to struggle
against it with all my might. Gunga Dass was offen-
sively jocular till I told him that if he addressed another
remark of any kind whatever to me I should strangle
him where he sat. This silenced him till silence became
insupportable, and I bade him say something.

'You will live here till you die like the other Fe-
ringhi,' he said coolly, watching me over the fragment
of gristle that he was gnawing.

'What other Sahib, you swine? Speak at once, and
don't stop to tell me a lie.'

'He- is over there,' answered Gunga Dass, pointing
to a burrow-mouth about four doors to the left of my
own. 'You can see for yourself. He died in the bur-
row as you will die, and I will die, and as all these men
and women and the one child will also die.'

'For pity's sake tell me all you know about him.
Who was he? When did he come, and when did he die?'

This appeal was a weak step on my part. Gunga
Dass only leered and replied! 'I will not unless you
give me something first.'

174

UNDER THE DEODARS

Then I recollected where I was, and struck the man
between the eyes, partially stunning him. He stepped
down from the platform at once, and, cringing and
fawning and weeping and attempting to embrace my
ieet, led me round to the burrow which he had in-
dicated.

'I know nothing whatever about the gentleman. Your
God be my witness that I do not. He was as anxious to
escape as you were, and he was shot from the boat, though
we all did all things to prevent him from attempting. He
was shot here.' Gunga Dass laid his hand on his lean
stomach and bowed to the earth.

' Well , and what then ? Go on ! '

'And then — and then, Your Honour, we carried him
into his house and gave him water, and put wet cloths
on the wound, and he laid down in his house and gave up
the ghost.'

1 In how long? In how long? '

'About half an hour, after he received his wound. I
call Vishn to witness,' yelled the wretched man, 'that I did
everything for him. Everything which was possible, that
I did!'

He threw himself down on the ground and clasped my
ankles. But I had my doubts about Gunga Dass's
benevolence, and kicked him off as he lay protesting.

' I believe you robbed him of everything he had. But I
can find out in a minute or two. How long was the Sahib
here?'

' Nearly a year and a half. I think he must have gone
mad. But hear me swear, Protector of the Poor! Won't
Your Honour hear me swear that I never touched an
article that belonged to him? What is Your Worship
going to do? '

I had taken Gunga Dass by the waist and had hauled

THE STRANGE RIDE

175

Aim on to the platform opposite the deserted burrow. As
I did so I thought of my wretched fellow-prisoner's un-
speakable misery among all these horrors for eighteen
months, and the final agony of dying like a rat in a hole,
with a bullet wound in the stomach. Gunga Dass fancied
I was going to kill him and howled pitifully. The rest of
the population, in the plethora that follows a full flesh
meal, watched us without stirring.

' Go inside, Gunga Dass,' said I, ' and fetch it out.'

I was feeling sick and faint with horror now. Gunga
Dass nearly rolled off the platform and howled aloud.

' But I am Brahmin, Sahib — a high-caste Brahmin. By
your soul, by your father's soul, do not make me do this
thing!'

'Brahmin or no Brahmin, by my soul and my father's
soul, in you go!' I said, and, seizing him by the shoulders,
I crammed his head into the mouth of the burrow, kicked
the rest of him in, and, sitting down, covered my face with
my hands.

At the end of a few minutes I heard a rustle and a creak;
then Gunga Dass in a sobbing, choking whisper speaking
to himself; then a soft thud — and I uncovered my eyes.

The dry sand had turned the corpse entrusted to its
keeping into a yellow-brown mummy. I told Gunga
Dass to stand off while I examined it. The body clad in
an olive-green hunting suit much stained and worn, with
leather paxls on the shoulders was that of a man be-
tween thirty and forty, above middle height, with light,
sandy hair, long moustache, and a rough unkempt beard.
The left canine of the upper jaw was missing, and a
portion of the lobe of the right ear was gone. On the
second linger of the left hand was a ring a shield -shaped
blood stone set in gold, with a monogram that might have
been either 1 IJ. K.' or ' B. L.' On the third linger of the

176

UNDER THE DEODARS

right hand was a silver ring in the shape of a coiled cobra
much worn and tarnished. Gunga Dass deposited a hand-
ful of trifles he had picked out of the burrow at my feet,
and, covering the face of the body with my handkerchief,
I turned to examine these. I give the full. list in the hope
that it may lead to the identification of the unfortunate
man : —

1. Bowl of a briarwood pipe, serrated at the edge;
much worn and blackened; bound with string at the
screw.

2 . Two patent-lever keys ; wards of both broken.

3. Tortoise-shell-handled penknife, silver or nickel,
name-plated, marked with monogram 'B. K.'

4. Envelope, postmark undecipherable, bearing a

Victorian stamp, addressed to 'Miss Mon ' (rest

illegible) — 'ham ' — 'nt.'

5. Imitation crocodile-skin notebook with pencil.
First forty-five pages blank; four and a half illegible;
fifteen others filled with private memoranda relating
chiefly to three persons — a Mrs. L. Singleton, abbreviated
several times to 'Lot Single,' 'Mrs. S. May,' and 'Garmi-
son,' referred to in places as 'Jerry' or 'Jack.'

6. Handle of small-sized hunting-knife. Blade
snapped short. Buck's horn, diamond-cut, with swivel
and ring on the butt; fragment of cotton cord attached.

It must not be supposed that I inventoried .all these
things on the spot- as fully as I have here written
them down. The notebook first attracted my atten-
tion, and I put it in my pocket with a view to study-
ing it later on. The rest of the articles I conveyed to
my burrow for safety's sake, and there, being a method-
ical man, I inventoried them. I then returned to the
corpse and ordered Gunga Dass to help me to carry
it out to the river-front. While we were engaged in

THE STRANGE RIDE

177

';his, the exploded shell of an old brown cartridge
dropped out of one of the pockets and rolled at my
feet. Gunga Dass had not seen it; and I fell to thinking
that a man does not carry exploded cartridge-cases,
especially 'browns,' which will not bear loading twice,
about with him when shooting. In other words, that
cartridge-case had been fired inside the crater. Conse-
quently there must be a gun somewhere. I was on the
verge of asking Gunga Dass, but checked myself, knowing
that he would lie. We laid the body down on the edge of
the quicksand by the tussocks. It was my intention to
push it out and let it be swallowed up — the only possible
mode of burial that I could think of. I ordered Gunga
Dass to go away.

Then I gingerly put the corpse out on the quicksand.
In doing so, it was lying face downward, I tore the frail
ind rotten khaki shooting-coat open, disclosing a hideous
cavity in the back. I have already told you that the dry
sand had, as it were, mummified the body. A moment's
glance showed that the gaping hole had been caused by a
gunshot wound; the gun must have been fired with (lie
muzzle almost touching the back. The shooting-coat,
being intact, had been drawn over the body after death,
which must have been instantaneous. The secret of the
poor wretch's death was plain to me in a Hash. Some one
of the crater, presumably Gunga Dass, must have shot
him witlf his own gun the gun that titled the brown
cartridges. He liad never attempted to esc ape in the face
of the rifle-lire from the boat .

I pushed the corpse out hastily, and s;i\v i( sink from
sight literally in a few seconds. I shuddered as I watched.
In a dazed, half-conscious way I turned to peruse
the notebook. A stained and discoloured slip of paper
bad been inserted between the binding and the back, and

1 78

UNDER THE DEODARS

dropped out as I opened the pages. This is what it con
tained: 'Four out from crow-clump; three left; nine out; two
right; three back; two left; fourteen out; two left; seven out;
one left; nine back; two right; six back; four right; seven
back.'' The paper had been burnt and charred at the
edges. What it meant I could not understand. I sat
down on the dried bents turning it over and over between
my fingers, until I was aware of Gunga Dass standing
immediately behind me with glowing eyes and out-
stretched hands.

'Have you got it?' he panted. 'Will you not let me
look at it also? I swear that I will return it.'

' Got what? Return what?'' I asked.

'That which you have in your hands. It will help us
both.' He stretched out his long, bird-like talons, trem-
bling with eagerness.

' I could never find it,' he continued. ' He had secreted
it about his person. Therefore I shot him, but neverthe-
less I was unable to obtain it.'

Gunga Dass had quite forgotten his little fiction about
the rifle-bullet. I heard him calmly. Morality is
blunted by consorting with the Dead who are alive.

'What on earth are you raving about? What it is you
want me to give you? '

'The piece of paper in the notebook. It will help us
both. Oh, you fool ! You fool ! Can you not see what it
will do for us? We shall escape ! '

His voice rose almost to a scream, and he danced with
excitement before me. I own I was moved at the chance
of getting away.

'Do you mean to say that this slip of paper will help us?
What does it mean? '

'Read it aloud! Read it aloud! I beg and I pray to
you to read it aloud,'

THE STRANGE RIDE

179

I did so. Gunga Dass listened delightedly, and drew
an irregular line in the sand with his fingers.

' See now ! It was the length of his gun-barrels without
the stock. I have those barrels. Four gun-barrels out
from the place where I caught crows. Straight out; do you
mind me? Then three left. Ah! Now well I remember
how that man worked it out night after night. Then nine
out, and so on. Out is always straight before you across
the quicksand to the North. He told me so before I killed
him.'

'But if you knew all this why didn't you get out be-
Jore?'

' I did not know it. He told me that he was working it
out a year and a half ago, and how he was working it out
night after night when the boat had gone away, and he
could get out near the quicksand safely. Then he said
that we would get away together. But I was afraid that he
would leave me behind one night when he had worked it
all out, and so I shot him. Besides, it is not advisable that
the men who once get in here should escape. Only I, and
I am a Brahmin.'

The hope of escape had brought Gunga Dass's caste
back to him. He stood up, walked about and gesticulated
violently. Eventually I managed to make him talk
soberly, and he told me how tlus Englishman had spent
six months night after night in exploring, inch by inch,
the passage across the quicksand; how he had declared it
to be simplicity itself up to within about twenty yards of
the river bank after turning the Hank of the left horn of

the horseshoe. This much he had evidently not com-
pleted when Gunga Dass shot him with his own gun.

In my frenzy of delight at the possibilities of escape I
recollect shaking hands wildly with Gunga Dass, after
We had decided that we were to make an attempt to

i8o

UNDER THE DEODARS

get away that very night. It was weary work waiting
throughout the afternoon.

About ten o'clock, as far as I could judge, when the
Moon had just risen above the hp of the crater, Gunga
Dass made a move for his burrow to bring out the gun-
barrels whereby to measure our path. All the other
wretched inhabitants had retired to their lairs long ago.
The guardian boat drifted down-stream some hours be-
fore, and we were utterly alone by the crow-clump.
Gunga Dass, while carrying the gun-barrels, let slip the
piece of paper which was to be our guide. I stooped
down hastily to recover it, and, as I did so, I was aware
that the creature was aiming a violent blow at the back of
my head with the. gun-barrels. It was too late to turn
round. I must have received the blow somewhere on the
nape of my neck, for I fell senseless at the edge of the
quicksand.

When I recovered consciousness, the Moon was going
down, and I was sensible of intolerable pain in the back
of my head. Gunga Dass had disappeared and my
mouth was full of blood. I lay down again and prayed
that I might die without more ado. Then the unrea-
soning fury which I have before mentioned laid hold
upon me, and I staggered inland towards the walls of
the crater. It seemed that some one was calling to me
in a whisper — 'Sahib! Sahib! Sahib!' exactly as my
bearer used to call me in the mornings. I fancied that
I was delirious until a handful of sand fell at my feet.
Then I looked up and saw a head peering down into
the amphitheatre — the head of Dunnoo, my dog-boy,
who attended to my collies. As soon as he had at-
tracted my attention, he held up his hand and showed
a rope. I motioned, staggering -to and fro the while,
that he should throw it down. It was a couple of

THE STRANGE RIDE

leather punkah ropes knotted together, with a loop at
one end. I slipped the loop over my head and under
my arms; heard Dunnoo urge something forward; was
conscious that I was being dragged, face downward, up
the steep sand-slope, and the next instant found myself
choked and half-fainting on the sand hills overlooking
the crater. Dunnoo, with his face ashy gray in the
moonlight, implored me not to stay but to get back to
my tent at once.

It seems that he had tracked Pornic's footprints four-
teen miles across the sands to the crater; had returned
and told my servants, who flatly refused to meddle with
any one, white or black, once fallen into the hideous
Village of the Dead; whereupon Dunnoo had taken
one of my ponies and a couple of punkah ropes, re-
turned to the crater, and hauled me out as I have de-
scribed.

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

Brother to a Prince and fellow to a beggar if he be found worthy.

The Law, as quoted, lays down a fair conduct of life,
and one not easy to follow. I have been fellow to a
beggar again and again under circumstances which pre-
vented either of us finding out whether the other was
worthy. I have still to be brother to a Prince, though
I once came near to kinship with what might have been
a veritable King and was promised the reversion of a
Kingdom — army, law-courts, revenue and policy all
complete. But, to-day, I greatly fear that my King
is dead, and if I want a crown I must go hunt it for
myself.

The beginning of everything was in a railway train
upon the road to Mhow from Ajmir. There had been
a Deficit in the Budget, which necessitated travelling,
not Second-class, which is only half as dear as First-
class, but by Intermediate, which is very awful indeed.
There are no cushions in the Intermediate class, and the
population are either Intermediate, which is Eurasian,
or native, which for a long night journey is nasty, or
Loafer, which is amusing though intoxicated. Inter-
mediates do not buy from refreshment-rooms. They
carry their food in bundles and pots, and buy sweets
from the native sweetmeat-sellers, and drink the roadside
water. That is why in hot weather Intermediates are
taken out of the carriages dead, and in all weathers are
most properly looked down upon.

182

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

183

My particular Intermediate happened to be empty till
I reached Nasirabad, when a big black-browed gentle-
man in shirt-sleeves entered, and, following the custom
of Intermediates, passed the time of day. He was a
wanderer and a vagabond like myself, but with an
educated taste for whiskey. He told tales of things
he had seen and done, of out-of-the-way corners of
the Empire into which he had penetrated, and of ad-
ventures in which he risked his life for a few days'
food.

'If India was filled with men like you and me, not
knowing more than the crows where they'd get their
next day's rations, it isn't seventy millions of revenue
the land would be paying — it's seven hundred millions,'
said he; and as I looked at his mouth and chin I was
disposed to agree with him.

We talked politics — the politics of Loaferdom that
sees things from the underside where the lath and plaster
is not smoothed off — and we talked postal arrangements
because my friend wanted to send a telegram back from
the next station to Ajmir, the turning-off place from the
Bombay to the Mhow line as you travel westward. My
friend had no money beyond eight annas which he
wanted for dinner, and I had no money at all, owing to
the hitch in the Budget before mentioned. Further, I
was going into a wilderness where, though I should re-
sume touch with the Treasury, there were no telegraph
offices. I was, therefore, unable to help him in any way.

'We miglil threaten a Station master, and make him
send a wire on tick,' said my friend, 'but that'd mean
enquiries for you and for me, and /\e got my hands
full these days. Did you say you were travelling bark
along this line within any days?'

'Within ten,' I said.

1 84

UNDER THE DEODARS

1 Can't you make it eight?' said he. ' Mine is rather
urgent business.'

' I can send your telegram v/ithin ten days if that will
serve you,' I said.

'I couldn't trust the wire to fetch him now I think
of it. It's this way. He leaves Delhi on the 23rd for
Bombay. That means he'll be running through Ajmir
about the night of the 23rd.'

'But I'm going into the Indian Desert,' I explained.

' Well and good,' said he. 1 You'll be changing at Ma r
vvar Junction to get into Jodhpore territory — you mu-M
do that — and he'll be coming through Marwar Junction
in the early morning of the 24th by the Bombay Mail
Can you be at Marwar Junction on that time? 'Twon't
be inconveniencing you because I know that there's pre
cious few pickings to be got out of these Central Indi 1
States — even though you pretend to be correspondent o
the Backwoodsman.'

' Have you ever tried that trick?' I asked.

'Again and again, but the Residents find you out
and then you get escorted to the Border before you've
time to get your knife into them. But about my friend
here. I must give him a word o' mouth to tell him
what's come to me or else he won't know where to go.
I would take it more than kind of you if you was to come
out of Central India in time to catch him at Marwar
Junction, and say to him: "He has gone South for the
week." He'll know what that means. He's a big man
with a red beard, and a great swell he is. You'll find
him sleeping like a gentleman with all his luggage round
him in a Second-class apartment. But don't you be
afraid. Slip down the window and say: "He has gone
South for the week," and he'll tumble. It's only cut-
ting your time of stay in those parts by two days. I ask

THE MAN WHO WOUL£ BE KING

you as a stranger — going to the West,' he said with em-
phasis.

'Where have you come from?' said I.

'From the East,' said he, 'and I am hoping that you
will give him the message on the Square — for the sake of
my Mother as well as your own.'

Englishmen are not usually softened by appeals to
the memory of their mothers; but for certain reasons,
which will be fully apparent, I saw fit to agree.

'It's more than a little matter,' said he, 'and that's
why I asked you to do it — and now I know that I can
depend on you doing it. A Second-class carriage at
Marwar Junction, and a red-haired man asleep in it.
You'll be sure to remember. I get out at the next sta-
tion, and I must hold on there till he comes or sends me
what I want.'

'I'll give the message if I catch him/ I said, 'and
for the sake of your Mother as well as mine I'll give
you a word of advice. Don't try to run the Central
India States just now as the correspondent of the Back-
woodsman. There's a real one knocking about here, and
it might lead to trouble.'

'Thank you,' said he simply, 'and when will the
swine be gone? I can't starve because he's ruining my
work. I wanted to get hold of the Degumber Rajah down
here about his father's widow, ;md give him a jump.'

'What did he do to his father's widow, t hen? 1

'Filled her up with red pepper and slippered her
to death as she hung from a beam. I found thai out
myself and I'm the only man that would dare going into
the State to get hush-money for it. They'll try tO
poison me, same as they did in C'hortumna when I went
on the loot there. Hut you'll give the man at Marwar
[unction my message?'

i86

UNDER THE DEODARS

He got out at a little roadside station, and I reflected.
I had heard, more than once, of men personating corre-
spondents of newspapers and bleeding small Native
States with threats of exposure, but I had never met
any of the caste before. They lead a hard life, and
generally die with great suddenness. The Native
States have a wholesome horror of English newspapers,
which may throw light on their peculiar methods of
government, and do their best to choke correspondents
with champagne, or drive them out of their mind with
four-in-hand barouches. They do not understand that
nobody cares a straw for the internal administration of
Native States so long as oppression and crime are kept
within decent limits, and the ruler is not drugged, drunk,
or diseased from one end of the year to the other. They
are the dark places of the earth, full of unimaginable
cruelty, touching the Railway and the Telegraph on one
side, and, on the other, the days of Harun-al-Raschid.
When I left the train I did business with divers Kings
and in eight days passed through many changes of life.
Sometimes I wore dress-clothes and consorted with Princes
and Politicals, drinking from crystal and eating from sil-
ver. Sometimes I lay out upon the ground and de-
voured what I could get, from a plate made of leaves,
and drank the running water, and slept under the same
rug as my servant. It was all in the day's work.

Then I headed, for the Great Indian Desert upon
the proper date, as I had promised, and the night Mail
set me down at Marwar Junction, where a funny little,
happy-go-lucky, native-managed railway runs to Jodh-
pore. The Bombay Mail from Delhi makes a short
halt at Marwar. She arrived as I got in, and I had just
time to hurry to her platform and go down the carriages.
There was only one Second-class on the train. I slipped

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING 187

the window and looked down upon a flaming red beard,
half covered by a railway rug. That was my man, fast
asleep, and I dug him gently in the ribs. He woke with a
grunt and I saw his face in the light of the lamps. It
was a great and shining face.
'Tickets again?' said he.

'No,' said I. 'I am to tell you that he is gone South
for the week. He has gone South for the week ! '

The train had begun to move out. The red man
rubbed his eyes. 'He has gone South for the week,'
he repeated. 'Now that's just like his impidence.
Did he say that I was to give you anything? 'Cause I
won't.'

'He didn't,' I said and dropped away, and watched
the red lights die out in the dark. It was horribly
cold because the wind was blowing off the sands. I
climbed into my own train — not an Intermediate car-
nage this time — and went to sleep.

If the man with the beard had given me a rupee
I should have kept it as a memento of a rather curious
affair. But the consciousness of having done my duty
was my only reward.

Later on I reflected that two gentlemen like my
friends could not do any good if they foregathered and
personated correspondents of newspapers, and might,
if they black-mailed one of the little rat trap states of
Central fndia or Southern Rajputana, gel themselves
into serious difficulties. 1 therefore took some trouble
to describe them as accurately as I could remember to
people who would be interested in deporting them: and
succeeded, so I was later informed, in having them headed
back from the Degumber borders.

Then I became respectable, and returned to an Office
where there were no Kings and no incidents outside the

UNDER THE DEODARS

daily manufacture of a newspaper. A newspaper office
seems to attract every conceivable sort of person, to the
prejudice of discipline. Zenana-mission ladies arrive,
and beg that the Editor will instantly abandon all his
duties to describe a Christian prize-giving in a back-slum
of a perfectly inaccessible village; Colonels who have been
overpassed for command sit down and sketch the outline
of a series of ten, twelve, or twenty-four leading articles
on Seniority versus Selection; missionaries wish to know
why they have not been permitted to escape from their
regular vehicles of abuse and swear at a brother-mission-
ary under special patronage of the editorial We; stranded
theatrical companies troop up to explain that they can-
not pay for their advertisements, but on their return from
New Zealand or Tahiti will do so with interest; inventors
of patent punkah-pulling machines, carriage couplings
and unbreakable swords and axle-trees call with specifica-
tions in their pockets and hours at their disposal; tea-
companies enter and elaborate their prospectuses with the
office pens; secretaries of ball-committees clamour to have
the glories of their last dance more fully described; strange
ladies rustle in and say: 'I want a hundred lady's cards
printed at once, please,' which is manifestly part of an
Editor's duty; and every dissolute ruffian that ever
tramped the Grand Trunk Road makes it his business to
ask for employment as a proof-reader. And, all the time,
the telephone-bell is ringing madly, and Kings are being
killed on the Continent, and Empires are saying — ' You're
another,' and Mister Gladstone is calling down brimstone
upon the British Dominions, and the little black copy-
boys are whining, lkaa-pi chay-ha-yehy (copy wanted)
like tired bees, and most of the paper is as blank as
Modred's shield.
But that is the amusing part of the year. There are

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING 189

six other months when none ever come to call, and the
thermometer walks inch by inch up to the top of the glass,
and the office is darkened to just above reading-light, and
the press-machines are red-hot to touch, and nobody
writes anything but accounts of amusements in the Hill-
stations or obituary notices. Then the telephone becomes
a tinkling terror, because it tells you of the sudden deaths
of men and women that you knew intimately, and the
prickly heat covers you with a garment, and you sit down
and write : * A slight increase of sickness is reported from
the Khuda Janta Khan District. The outbreak is purely
sporadic in its nature, and, thanks to the energetic efforts
of the District authorities, is now almost at an end.
It is, however, with deep regret we record the death,'
etc.

Then the sickness really breaks out, and the less re-
cording and reporting the better for the peace of the sub-
scribers. But the Empires and the Kings continue to
divert themselves as selfishly as before, and the Foreman
thinks that a daily paper really ought to come out once in
twenty-four hours, and all the people at the Hill-stations
in the middle of their amusements say: 'Good gracious!
Why can't the paper be sparkling? I'm sure there's
plenty going on up here.'

That is the dark half of the moon, and, as the adver-
tisements say, 'must be experienced to be appreciated.1

It was^in that season, and a remarkably evil season,
that the paper began running the last issue of the week on
Saturday night , which is to say Sunday morning, after the
custom of a London paper. This was a great convenience,
for immediately after the paper was put to bed, the dawn
would lower the thermometer from 96° to almost 840 for
half an hour, and in that chill you have no idea how
cold is 840 on the grass until you begin to pray for it — a

190

UNDER THE DEODARS

very tired man could get off to sleep ere the heat roused
him.

One Saturday night it was my pleasant duty to put the
paper to bed alone. A King or courtier or a courtesan or
a Community was going to die or get a new Constitution,
or do something that was important on the other side of
the world, and the paper was to be held open till the
latest possible minute in order to catch the telegram.

It was a pitchy black night, as stifling as a June night
can be, and the loo, the red-hot wind from the westward,
was booming among the tinder-dry trees and pretending
that the rain was on its heels. Now and again a spot of
almost boiling water would fall on the dust with the flop
of a frog, but all our weary world knew that was only
pretence. It was a shade cooler in the press-room than
the office, so I sat there, while the type ticked and clicked,
and the night-jars hooted at the windows, and the all but
naked compositors wiped the sweat from their foreheads,
and called for water. The thing that was keeping us
back,* whatever it was, would not come off, though the loo
dropped and the last type was set, and the whole round
earth stood still in the choking heat, with its finger on its
lip, to wait the event. I drowsed, and wondered whether
the telegraph was a blessing, and whether this dying man,
or struggling people, might be aware of the inconvenience
the delay was causing. There was no special reason be-
yond the heat and worry to make tension, but, as the
clock-hands crept up to three o'clock and the machines
spun their fly-wheels two and three times to see that all was
in order, before I said the word that would set them off, I
could have shrieked aloud.

Then the roar and rattle of the wheels shivered the
quiet into little bits. I rose to go away, but two men in
white clothes stood in front of me. The first one said:

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

' It's him!' The second said: ' So it is!' And they both
laughed almost as loudly as the machinery roared, and
mopped their foreheads. 'We seed there was a light
burning across the road and we were sleeping in that ditch
there for coolness, and I said to my friend here, The office
is open. Let's come along and speak to him as turned us
back from the Degumber State,' said the smaller of the
two. He was the man I had met in the Mhow train, and
his fellow was the red-bearded man of Marwar Junction.
There was no mistaking the eyebrows of the one or the
beard of the other.

I was not pleased, because I wished to go to sleep, not
to squabble with loafers. ' What do you want? ' I asked.

'Half an hour's talk with you, cool and comfortable, in
the office,' said the red-bearded man. 'We'd like some
drink — the Con track doesn't begin yet, Peachey, so you
needn't look — but what we really want is advice. We
don't want money. We ask you as a favour, because we
found out you did us a bad turn about Degumber
State.'

I led from the press-room to the stifling office with the
maps on the walls, and the red-haired man rubbed his
hands. 'That's something like,' said he. 'This was the
proper shop to come to. Now, Sir, let me introduce to
you Brother Peachey Carnehan, that's him, and Brother
Daniel Dravot, that is me, and the less said about our
professions the better, for we have been most things in our
time. Soldier, sailor, compositor, photographer, proof-
reader, street-preacher, and correspondents of the Back-
woodsman when we thought the paper wanted one.
Carnehan is sober, and so am I. Look at us first, and sec
that's sure. It will save you cutting into my talk. We'll
take one of your cigars apiece, and you shall see us light
up/

i$2

UNDER THE DEODARS

I watched the test. The men were absolutely sober, so
I gave them each a tepid whiskey and soda.

'Well and good,' said Carnehan of the eyebrows, wiping
the froth from his moustache. 'Let me talk now, Dan.
We have been all over India, mostly on foot. We have
been boiler-fitters, engine-drivers, petty contractors, and
all that, and we have decided that India isn't big enough
for such as us.'

They certainly were too big for the office. Dravot's
beard seemed to fill half the room and Carnehan's
shoulders the other half, as they sat on the big table.
Carnehan continued: 'The country isn't half worked out
because they that governs it won't let you touch it. They
spend all their blessed time in governing it, and you can't
lift a spade, nor chip a rock, nor look for oil, nor anything
like that without all the Government saying — "Leave it
alone, and let us govern." Therefore, such as it is, we will
let it alone, and go away to some other place where a mar»
isn't crowded and can come to his own. We are not little
men, and there is nothing that we are afraid of except
Drink, and we have signed a Contrack on that. There-
for* , we are going away to be Kings.'

'Kings in our own right,' muttered Dravot.

'Yes, of course,' I said. 'You've been tramping in the
sun, and it's a very warm night, and hadn't you better
sleep over the notion? Come to-morrow.'

'Neither drunk nor sunstruck,' said Dravot. ' We have
slept over the notion half a year, and require to see Books
and Atlases, and we have decided that there is only one
place now in the world that two strong men can Sar-a-
whack. They call it Kafiristan. By my reckoning it's the
top right-hand corner of Afghanistan, not more than
three hundred miles from Peshawar. They have two-
and-thirty heathen idols there, and we'll be the thirty-

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

third and fourth. It's a mountaineous country, and the
women of those parts are very beautiful/

'But that is provided against in the Contrack,' said
Carnehan. ' Neither Woman nor Liqu-or, Daniel. '

'And that's all we know, except that no one has gone
there, and they fight, and in any place where they fight a
man who knows how to drill men can always be a King.
We shall go to those parts and say to any King we find —
"D'you want to vanquish your foes?" and we will show
him how to drill men; for that we know better than any-
thing else. Then we will subvert that King and seize his
Throne and establish a Dy-nasty.'

'You'll be cut to pieces before you're fifty miles across
the Border,' I said. 'You have to travel through Afghan-
istan to get to that country. It's one mass of mountains
and peaks and glaciers, and no Englishman has been
through it. The people are utter brutes, and even if you
•eached them you couldn't do anything.'

' That's more like,' said Carnehan. ' If you could think
us a little more mad we would be more pleased. Wc have
come to you to know about this country, to read a book
about it, and to be shown maps. We want you to tell us
that we are fools and to show us your books.' He turned
to the book-cases.

'Are you at all in earnest? ' I said.

'A little,' said Dravot sweetly. 'As big a map as you
have got,tvcn if it's all blank where Kafiristan is, and any
books yotl've got. We can read, though we aren't very
educated.'

I uncased the big thirty-two-milcs-to-t he-inch map of
India, and two smaller Frontier maps, hauled down vol-
ume INF-KAN of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and the
men consulted t hem.

'Sec' here!' said Dravot, his thumb on the map. 'Up to

194

UNDER THE DEODARS

Jagdallak, Peachey and me know the road. We was there
with Roberts' Army. We'll have to turn off to the right
at Jagdallak through Laghmann territory. Then we get
among the hills — fourteen thousand feet— fifteen thou-
sand— it will be cold work there, but it don't look very far
on the map.'

I handed him Wood on the Sources of the Oxus. Carne-
han was deep in the Encyclopcedia.

'They're a mixed lot,' said Dravot reflectively; 'and it
won't help us to know the names of their tribes. The
more tribes the more they'll fight, and the better for us.
From Jagdallak to Ashang. H'mm ! '

'But all the information about the country is as sketchy
and inaccurate as can be,' I protested. 'No one knows
anything about it really. Here's the file of the United
Services' Institute. Read what Bellew says.'

' Blow Bellew I ' said Carnehan. ' Dan, they're a stinkin'
lot of heathens, but this book here says they think they're
related to us English.'

I smoked while the men pored over Raverty, W ood, the
maps, and the Encyclopcedia.

'There is no use your waiting,' said Dravot politely.
'It's about four o'clock now. We'll go before six o'clock
if you want to sleep, and we won't steal any of the
papers. Don't you sit up. We're two harmless lunatics,
and if you come to-morrow evening down to the Serai
we'll say good-bye to you.'

'You are two fools,' I answered. 'You'll be turned
back at the Frontier or cut up the minute you set foot
in Afghanistan. Do you want any money or a rec-
ommendation down-country? I can help you to the
chance of work next week.'

'Next week we shall be hard at work ourselves, thank
you,' said Dravot. 'It isn't so easy being a King as it

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING 195

'ooks. When we've got our Kingdom in going order
we'll let you know, and you can come up and help us to
govern it*.'

'Would two lunatics make a Contrack like that?'
said Carnehan, with subdued pride, showing me a
greasy half-sheet of notepaper on which was written
the following. I copied it, then and there, as a curi-
osity—

This Contract between me and you persuing witnesseth
in the name of God — Amen and so forth.

{One) That me and you will settle this matter to-
gether; i.e., to be Kings of Kafristan.

(Two) That you and me will not, while this matter
is being settled, look at any Liquor, nor
any Woman black, white, or brown, so as
to get mixed up with one or the other harm-,
fid.

(Three) That we conduct ourselves with Dignity
and Discretion, and if one of us gets into
trouble the other will stay by him.
Signed by you and me this day.

Peachey Taliaferro Carnehan.

Daniel Dravot.

Both Gentlemen at Large.

0>

' There was no need for the last article,' said Carne-
han, blusliing modestly; 'but it looks regular. Now
you know the sort of men that loafers are — we arc
loafers, Dan, until we get out of India and do you
think that we would sign a Contrack like that unless
we was in earnest? We have kept away from the two
things that make life worth having.'

196

UNDER THE DEODARS

'You won't enjoy your lives much longer if you are
going to try this idiotic adventure. Don't set the office
on fire,' I said, 'and go away before nine o'clock.'

I left them still poring over the maps and making
notes on the back of the 'Contrack.' 'Be sure to come
down to the Serai to-morrow,' were their parting words.

The Kumharsen Serai is the great four-square sink of
humanity where the strings of camels and horses from
the North load and unload. All the nationalities of
Central Asia may be found there, and most of the
folk of India proper. Balkh and Bokhara there meet
Bengal and Bombay, and try to draw eye-teeth. You
can buy ponies, turquoises, Persian pussy-cats, saddle-
oags, fat-tailed sheep and musk in the Kumharsen
Serai, and get many strange things for nothing. In
the afternoon I went down to see whether my friends
intended to keep their word or were lying there drunk.

A priest attired in fragments of ribbons and rags
stalked up to me, gravely twisting a child's paper whirli-
gig. Behind him was his servant bending under the
load of a crate of mud toys. The two were loading up
two camels, and the inhabitants of the Serai watched
them with shrieks of laughter.

'The priest is mad,' said a horse-dealer to me. 'He
is going up to Kabul to sell toys to the Amir. He will
either be raised to honour or have his head cut off. He
came in here this morning and has been behaving madly
ever since.'

'The witless are under the protection of God,' stam-
mered a flat-cheeked Usbeg in broken Hindi. 'They
foretell future events.'

'Would they could have foretold that my caravan
would have been cut up by the Shinwaris almost within
shadow of the Pass!' grunted the Eusufzai agent of a

THE MAN WHO WOtTLD BE KING

197

Rajputana trading-house whose goods had been diverted
into the hands of other robbers just across the Border,
and whose misfortunes were the laughing-stock of the
bazar. 'Ohe, priest, whence come you and whither do
you go? '

'From Roum have I come/ shouted the priest, wav-
ing his whirligig; 'from Roum, blown by the breath of
a hundred devils across the sea! O thieves, robbers,
liars, the blessing of Pir Khan on pigs, dogs, and per-
jurers! Who will take the Protected of God to the
North to sell charms that are never still to the Amir?
The camels shall not gall, the sons shall not fall sick,
and the wives shall remain faithful while they are away,
of the men who give me place in their caravan. Who
will assist me to slipper the King of the Roos with a
golden slipper with a silver heel? The protection of
Pir Khan be upon his labours!' He spread out the
skirts of his gaberdine and pirouetted between the lines
of tethered horses.

'There starts a caravan from Peshawar to Kabul
in twenty days, Huzrul,' said the Eusufzai trader. 'My
camels go therewith. Do thou also go and bring us
good-luck.'

'I will go even now!' shouted the priest. 'I will
depart upon my winged camels, and be at Peshawar in a
day.' Ho! Hazar Mir Khan/ he yelled to his servant)
'drive OUt the camels, but let me first mount my own.'

H*e leaped on the back of his beast as it knelt, and,
turning round to me, cried: 'Come thou also, Sahib, a
little along the road, and 1 will sell thee a charm — an
amulet that shall make thee King of Kaliristan.'

Then the light broke upon me, and I followed the
two camels out of the Serai till we reached open road
unci the priest halted.

0

198

UNDER THE DEODARS

'What d'you think o' that?' said he in English.
'Carnehan can't talk their patter, so I've made him my
servant. He makes a handsome servant. 'Tisn't for
nothing that I've been knocking about the country for
fourteen years. Didn't I do that talk neat? We'll
hitch on to a caravan at Peshawar till we get to Jag-
dallak, and then we'll see if we can get donkeys for our
camels, and strike into Kafiristan. Whirligigs for the
Amir, O Lor! Put your hand under the camel-bags
and tell me what you feel.'

I felt the butt of a Martini, and another and another,

' Twenty of 'em,' said Dravot placidly. 'Twenty ol
'em and ammunition to correspond, under the whirli-
gigs and the mud dolls.'

' Heaven help you if you are caught with those things ! '
I said. 'A Martini is worth her weight in silver among
the Pathans!'

'Fifteen hundred rupees of capital — every rupee wc
could beg, borrow, or steal — are invested on these two
camels,' said Dravot. 'We won't get caught. We're
going through the Khaiber with a regular caravan.
Who'd touch a poor mad priest?'

'Have you got everything you want?' I asked, over-
come with astonishment.

'Not yet, but we shall soon. Give us a memento of
your kindness, Brother. You did me a service, yester-
day, and that time in Marwar. Half my Kingdom shall
you have, as the saying is.' I slipped a small charm
compass from my watch chain and handed it up to the
priest.

'Good-bye/ said Dravot, giving me hand cautiously,
'It's the last time we'll shake hands with an English,
man these many days. Shake hands with him, Carn<*
han,* he cried, as the second camel passed me.

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

199

Carnehan leaned down and shook hands. Then the
camels passed away along the dusty road, and I was
left alone to wonder. My eye could detect no failure
in the disguises. The scene in the Serai proved that they
were complete to the native mind. There was just the
chance, therefore, that Carnehan and Dravot would be
able to wander through Afghanistan without detection.
But, beyond, they would find death — certain and aw-
ful death.

Ten days later a native correspondent giving me the
news of the day from Peshawar, wound up his letter
with: ' There has been much laughter here on account
of a certain mad priest who is going in his estimation
to sell petty gauds and insignificant trinkets which he
ascribes as great charms to H.H. the Amir of Bok-
hara. He passed through Peshawar and associated
himself to the Second Summer caravan that goes to
Kabul. The merchants are pleased because through
superstition they imagine that such mad fellows bring
good-fortune.'

The two, then, were beyond the Border. I would
have prayed for them, but, that night, a real King died
in Europe, and demanded an obituary notice.

The wheel of the world swings through the same
phases agarn and again. Summer passed and winter
thereafter, -and came and passed again. The daily
paper continued and I with it, and upon the third
summer there fell a hot night, a night-issue, and a
strained waiting for something to be telegraphed from
the Other side of the world, exactly its had happened
before. A few great men had died in the past two
years, the machines worked with more clatter, and

20O

UNDER THE DEODARS

some of the trees in the Office garden were a few feet
taller. But that was all the difference.

I passed over to the press-room, and went through
just such a scene as I have already described. The
nervous tension was stronger than it had been two
years before, and I felt the heat more acutely. At
three o'clock I cried, ' Print off,' and turned to go,
when there crept to my chair what was left of a man.
He was bent into a circle, his head was sunk between
his shoulders, and he moved his feet one over the other
like a bear. I could hardly see whether he walked or
crawled — this rag-wrapped, whining cripple who ad-
dressed me by name, crying that he was come back.
'Can you give me a drink?' he whimpered. 'For the
Lord's sake, give me a drink ! '

I went back to the office, the man following with
groans of pain, and I turned up the lamp.

'Don't you know me?' he gasped, dropping into a
chair, and he turned his drawn face, surmounted by a
shock of gray hair, to the light.

I looked at him intently. Once before had I seen
eyebrows that met over the nose in an inch-broad black
band, but for the life of me I could not tell where.

'I don't know you,' I said, handing him the whiskey.
'What can I do for you?'

He took a gulp of the spirit raw, and shivered in
spite of the suffocating heat.

'I've come back,' he repeated; 'and I was the King
of Kafiristan — me and Dravot — crowned Kings we was!
In this office we settled it — you setting there and giving
us the books. I am Peachey — Peachey Taliaferro Carne-
han, and you've been setting here ever since — O Lord! '

I was more than a little astonished, and expressed
my feelings accordingly.

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING ±61

'It's true,' said Carnehan, with a dry cackle, nursing
his feet, which were wrapped in rags. 'True as gos-
pel. Kings we were, with crowns upon our heads — ■
me and Dravot — poor Dan — oh, poor, poor Dan, that
would never take advice, not though I begged of him!'

'Take the whiskey,' I said, 'and take your own
time. Tell me all you can recollect of everything
from beginning to end. You got across the border
on your camels, Dravot dressed as a mad priest and
you his servant. Do you remember that?'

'I ain't mad — yet, but I shall be that way soon. Of
course I remember. Keep looking at me, or maybe my
words will go all to pieces. Keep looking at me in my
eyes and don't say anything.'

I leaned forward and looked into his face as steadily
as I could. He dropped one hand upon the table and
f grasped it by the wrist. It was twisted like a bird's
claw, and upon the back was a ragged, red, diamond-
shaped scar.

'No, don't look there. Look at me] said Carnehan.
'That comes afterwards, but for the Lord's sake don't dis-
track me. We left with that caravan, me and Dravot
playing all sorts of antics to amuse the people we were
with. Dravot used to make us laugh in the evening!
when all the people was cooking their dinners — cooking
their dinners, and . . . what did they do then?
They lit little fires with sparks that went into Dravot's
beard, and we all laughed — fit to die. Little red fires they
was, going into Dravot's big red beard — so funny.' His
eyes left mine and he smiled foolishly.

'You went as far as Jagdallak with that caravan,' I
said al a venture, 'after you had lit those tires. To Jag-
dallak, where you turned off to try to get into kaliristan.'

'No, we didn't neither. What are you talking about?

202

UNDER THE DEODARS

We turned off before Jagdallak, because we heard the
roads was good. But they wasn't good enough for our
two camels — mine and Dravot 's. When we left the cara-
van, Dravot took off all his clothes and mine too, and said
we would be heathen, because the Kafirs didn't allow
Mohammedans to talk to them. So we dressed betwixt
and between, and such a sight as Daniel Dravot I never
saw yet nor expect to see again. He burned half his
beard, and slung a sheep-skin over his shoulder, and
shaved his head into patterns. He shaved mine, too, and
made me wear outrageous things to look like a heathen.
That was in a most mountaineous country, and our
camels couldn't go along any more because of the
mountains. They were tall and black, and coming home
I saw them fight like wild goats — there are lots of goats in
Kafiristan. And these mountains, they never keep still,
no more than the goats. Always fighting they are, and
don't let you sleep at night.'

'Take some more whiskey,' I said very slowly. 'What
did you and Daniel Dravot do when the camels could go
no further because of the rough roads that led into
Kafiristan? '

' What did which do? There was a party called Peachey
Taliaferro Carnehan that was with Dravot. Shall I tell
you about him? He died out there in the cold. Slap from
the bridge fell old Peachey, turning and twisting in the
air like a penny whirligig that you can sell to the Amir. —
No; they was two for three ha'pence, those whirligigs, or I
am much mistaken and woeful sore. . . And then
these camels were no use, and Peachey said to Dravot —
" For the Lord's sake let's get out of this before our heads
are chopped off," and with that they killed the camels all
among the mountains, not having anything in particular
to eat. but first they took off the boxes with the guns and

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

203

the ammunition, till two men came along driving four
mules. Dravot up and dances in front of them, singing —
"Sell me four mules." Says the first man — "If you are
rich enough to buy, you are rich enough to rob;" but be-
fore ever he could put his hand to his knife, Dravot breaks
his neck over his knee, and the other party runs away. So
Carnehan loaded the mules with the rifles that was taken
off the camels, and together we starts forward into those
bitter cold mountaineous parts, and never a road broader
than the back of your hand.'

He paused for a moment, while I asked him if he could
remember the nature of the country through which he had
journeyed.

'I am telling you as straight as I can, but my head isn't
as good as it might be. They drove nails through it to
make me hear better how Dravot died. The country was
mountaineous and the mules were most contrary, and the
inhabitants was dispersed and solitary. They went up
and up, and down and down, and that other party, Carne-
han, was imploring of Dravot not to sing and whistle so
loud, for fear of bringing down the tremenjus avalanches.
But Dravot says that if a King couldn't sing it wasn't
worth being King, and whacked the mules over the rump,
and never took no heed for ten cold days. We came to a
big level valley all among the mountains, and the mules
were near dead, so we killed them, not having anything in
Special for them Or US to eat. We sat upon the boxes, and
played odd and even with the cartridges that was jolted
out.

'Then ten men with bows and arrows ran down that
valley, chasing twenty men with bows and arrows, and
the row was tremenjus. They was fair men fairer than
you or me with yellow hair and remarkable well built.
Says Dravot, unpacking the guns "This is the beginning

204 UNDER THE DEODARS

of the business. We'll fight for the ten men," and with
that he fires, two rifles at the twenty men, and drops one
of them at two hundred yards from the rock where he was
sitting. The other men began to run, but Carnehan and
Dravot sits on the boxes picking them off at all ranges, up
and down the valley. Then we goes up to the ten men that
had run across the snow too, and they fires a footy little
arrow at us. Dravot he shoots above their heads and
they all falls down flat. Then he walks over them and
kicks them, and then he lifts them up and shakes hands all
round to make them friendly like. He calls them and
gives them the boxes to carry, and waves his hand for all
the world as though he was King already. They takes
the boxes and him across the valley and up the hill into a
pine wood on the top, where there was half a dozen big
stone idols. Dravot he goes to the biggest — a fellow they
call Imbra — and lays a rifle and a cartridge at his feet,
rubbing his nose respectful with his own nose, patting him
on the head, and saluting in front of it. He turns round
to the men and nods his head, and says — "That's all
right. I'm in the know too, and all these old jim-jams arc
my friends." Then he opens his mouth and points down
it, and when the first man brings him food, he says —
"No;" and when the second man brings him food he says
— "No;" but when one of the old priests and the boss of
the village brings him food, he says — "Yes;" very
haughty, and eats it slow. That was how we came to our
first village, without any trouble, just as though we had
tumbled from the skies. But we tumbled from one of
those damned rope-bridges, you see and — you couldn't
expect a man to laugh much after that? '

'Take some more whiskey and go on,' I said. 'That
w as the first village you came into. How did you get to
be King? '

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

205

'I wasn't King,' said Carnehan. 'Dravot he was the
King, and a handsome man he looked with the gold crown
on his head and all. Him and the other party stayed in
that village, and every morning Dravot sat by the side of
old Imbra, and the people came and worshipped. That
was Dravot's order. Then a lot of men came into the
valley, and Carnehan Dravot picks them off with the
rifles before they knew where they was, and runs down
into the valley and up again the other side and finds an-
other village, same as the first one, and the people all falls
down flat on their faces, and Dravot says — "Now what is
the trouble between you two villages?" and the people
points to a woman, as fair as you or me, that was carried
off, and Dravot takes her back to the first village and
counts up the dead — eight there was. For each dead man
Dravot pours a little milk on the ground and waves his
arms like a whirligig and "That's all right," says he.
Then he and Carnehan takes the big boss of each village
by the arm and walks them down into the valley, and
shows them how to scratch a line with a spear right down
the valley, and gives each a sod of turf from both sides of
the line. Then all the people comes down and shouts
like the devil and all, and Dravot says "Go and dig the
land, and be fruitful and multiply," which they did,
though they didn't understand. Then we asks the names
of things in their lingo — bread and water and fire and
idols and such, and Dravot leads the priest of each village
up to the idol, and says he must sit there and judge the
people, and if anything goes wrong he is to be shot .

'Next week they was all turning up the land in the
valley as quiet as bees and much prettier, and the priests
heard all the complaints and told Dravot in dumb show
what it was about. "That's just the beginning," says
Dravot. "They think we're (jods." He and Carnehan

2©6

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picks out twenty good men and shows them how to click
off a rifle, and form fours, and advance in line, and they was
very pleased to do so, and clever to see the hang of it.
Then he takes out his pipe and his baccy-pouch and leaves
one at one village, and one at the other, and off we two
goes to see what was to be done in the next valley. That
was all rock, and there was a little village there, and Car-
nehan says — "Send 'em to the old valley to plant," and
takes 'em there and gives 'em some land that wasn't
took before. They were a poor lot, and we blooded
'em with a kid before letting 'em into the new King-
dom. That was to impress the people, and then they
settled down quiet, and Carnehan went back to Dravot
who had got into another valley, all snow and ice and
most mountaineous. There was no people there and the
Army got afraid, so Dravot shoots one of them, and goes
on till he finds some people in a village, and the Army ex-
plains that unless the people wants to be killed they had
better not shoot their little matchlocks; for they had
matchlocks. We makes friends with the priest and I stays
there alone with two of the Army, teaching the men how
to drill, and a thundering big Chief comes across the snow
with kettle-drums and horns twanging, because he heard
there was a new God kicking about. Carnehan sights for
the brown of the men half a mile across the snow and
wings one of them. Then he sends a message to the
Chief that, unless he wished to be killed, he must come and
shake hands with me and leave his arms behind. The
Chief comes alone first, and Carnehan shakes hands with
him and whirls his arms about, same as Dravot used, and
very much surprised that Chief was, and strokes my eye-
brows. Then Carnehan goes alone to the Chief, and asks
him in dumb show if he had an enemy he hated. "I
have," says the Chief. So Carnehan weeds out the pick

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

of his men, and sets the two of the Army to show them
drill and at the end of two weeks the men can manoeuvre
about as well as Volunteers. So he marches with the
Chief to a great big plain on the top of - a mountain, and
the Chief's men rushes into a village and takes it ; we three
Martinis firing into the brown of the enemy. So we took
that village too, and I gives the Chief a rag from my coat
and says, "Occupy till I come;" which was scriptural. By
way of a reminder, when me and the Army was eighteen
hundred yards away, I drops a bullet near him standing
on the snow, and all the people falls flat on their faces.
Then I sends a letter to Dravot wherever he be by land or
by sea.'

At the risk of throwing the creature out of train I in-
terrupted— 'How could you write a letter up yonder?'

'The letter? — Oh! — The letter! Keep looking at me
between the eyes, please. It was a string-talk letter, that
we'd learned the way of it from a blind beggar in the
Punjab.'

I remember that there had once come to the office a
blind man with a knotted twig and a piece of string which
he wound round the twig according to some cipher of his
own. He could, after the lapse of days or hours, repeat
the sentence which he had reeled up. He had reduced the
alphabet to eleven primitive sounds; and 1 ried to teaelune
his method, but I could not understand.

'I scnt'that letter to Dravot,' said Carnchan; 'and
told him to come back because this Kingdom was
growing too big for me to handle, and then I struek for
the first valley, to see how the pi sis were working.
They called the village we took along with the Chief.
Bashkai, and the first village we took, Kr-Heb. The
priests at Kr-IIeb was doing all right, but they had a
lot of pending eases about land to show me, and some

20S

UNDER THE DEODARS

men from another village had been firing arrows at
night. I went out and looked for that village, and
fired four rounds at it from a thousand yards. That
used all the cartridges I cared to spend, and I waited
for Dravot, who had been away two or three months,
and I kept my people quiet.

'One morning I heard the devil's own noise of drums
and horns, and Dan Dravot marches down the hill with
his Army and a tail of hundreds of men, and, which was
the most amazing, a great gold crown on his head. "My
Gord, Carnehan," says Daniel, "this is a tremenjus
business, and we've got the whole country as far as it's
worth having. I am the son of Alexander by Queen
Semiramis, and you're my younger brother and a God
too! It's the biggest thing we've ever seen. I've been
marching and fighting for six weeks with the Army, and
every footy little village for fifty miles has come in re-
joiceful; and more than that, I've got the key of the
whole show, as you'll see, and I've got a crown for you!
I told 'em to make two of 'em at a place called Shu,
where the gold lies in the rock like suet in mutton. Gold
I've seen, and turquoise I've kicked out of the cliffs,
and there's garnets in the sands of the river, and here's
a chunk of amber that a man brought me. Call up all
the priests and, here, take your crown."

'One of the men opens a black hair bag, and I slips
the crown on. It was too small and too heavy, but I
wore it for the glory. Hammered gold it was — five
pound weight, like a hoop of a barrel.

'"Peachey," says Dravot, "we don't want to fight
no more. The Craft's the trick so help me!" and he
brings forward that same Chief that I left at Bashkai
—Billy Fish we called him afterwards, because he was
so like Billy Fish that drove the big tank-engine al

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

Mach on the Bolan in the old days. " Shake hands
with him," says Dravot, and I shook hands and nearly
dropped, for Billy Fish gave me the Grip. I said noth-
ing, but tried him with the Fellow Craft Grip. He
answers, all right, and I tried the Master's Grip, but
that was a slip. "A Fellow Craft he is! " I says to Dan.
"Does he know the word?" — "He does," says Dan, "and
all the priests know. It's a miracle. The Chiefs and the
priests can work a Fellow Craft Lodge in a way that's
very like ours, and they've cut the marks on the rocks,
but they don't know the Third Degree, and they've come
to find out. It's Gord's Truth. I've known these long
years that the Afghans knew up to the Fellow Craft
Degree, but this is a miracle. A God and a Grand-
Master of the Craft am I, and a Lodge in the Third De-
gree I will open, and we'll raise the head priests and the
Chiefs of the villages."

'"It's against all the law," I says, "holding a Lodge
without warrant from any one; and you know we never
held office in any Lodge."

'"It's a master-stroke o' policy," says Dravot. "It
means running the country as easy as a four-wheeled
bogie on a down grade. We can't stop to enquire now,
or they'll turn against us. I've forty Chiefs at my
heel, and passed and raised according to their merit
they shall be. Billet these men on the villages, and
see that we run up a Lodge of some kind. The temple
of Imbra" will do for the Lodge room. The women
must make aprons as you show them. I'll hold a levee
of Chiefs to-night and Lodge to morrow."

'I was fair run off my legs, but I wasn't sueh a tool
as not to see what a pull this Craft business gave us. I
showed the priests' families how to make aprons of tin-
degrees, but for Dravot's apron the blue border and

2IO

UNDER THE DEODARS

marks was made of turquoise lumps on white hide, not
cloth. We took a great square stone in the temple
for the Master's chair, and little stones for the
officers' chairs, and painted the black pavement with
white squares, and did what we could to make things
regular.

'At the levee which was held that night on the hill-
side with big bonfires, Dravot gives out that him and
me were Gods and sons of Alexander, and Past Grand-
Masters in the Craft, and was come to make Kafiristan
a country where every man should eat in peace and
drink in quiet, and specially obey us. Then the Chiefs
come round to shake hands, and they were so hairy and
white and fair it was just shaking hands with old friends.
We gave them names according as they was like men We
had known in India — Billy Fish, Holly Dilworth, Pikky
Kergan, that was Bazar-master when I was at Mhow,
and so on, and so on.

' The most amazing miracles was at Lodge next night.
One of the old priests was watching us continuous, and I
felt uneasy, for I knew we'd have to fudge the Ritual, and
I didn't know what the men knew. The old priest was
a stranger come in from beyond the village of Bashkai.
The minute Dravot puts on the Master's apron that the
girls had made for him, the priest fetches a whoop and a
howl, and tries to overturn the stone that Dravot was
sitting on. "It's all up now," I says. "That comes of
meddling with the Craft without warrant!" Dravot
never winked an eye, not when ten priests took and tilted
over the Grand-Master's chair — which was to say the
stone of Imbra. The priest begins rubbing the bottom
end of it to clear away the black dirt, and presently he
shows all the other priests the Master's Mark, same as
was on Dravot's apron, cut into the stone. Not even the

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

211

priests of the temple of Imbra knew it was there. The
old chap falls flat on his face at Dravot's feet and kisses
'em. "Luck again," says Dravot, across the Lodge to
me, "they say it's the missing Mark that no one could
understand the why of. We're more than safe now."
Then he bangs the butt of his gun for a gavel and says:
"By virtue of the authority vested in me by my own
right hand and the help of Peachey, I declare myself
Grand-Master of all Freemasonry in Kafiristan in this
the Mother Lodge o' the country, and King of Kafiristan
equally with Peachey!" At that he puts on his crown
and I puts on mine — I was doing Senior Warden — and
we opens the Lodge in most ample form. It was a amaz-
ing miracle! The priests moved in Lodge through the
first two degrees almost without telling, as if the mem-
ory was coming back to them. After that, Peachey
and Dravot raised such as was worthy — high priests and
Chiefs of far-off villages. Billy Fish was the first, and
I can tell you we scared the soul out of him. It was not
in any way according to Ritual, but it served our turn.
We didn't raise more than ten of the biggest men, because
we didn't want to make the Degree common. And they
was clamouring to be raised.

'"In another six months," says Dravot, "we'll hold
another Communication, and see how you are work-
ing." Then he asks them about their villages, and
learns trfat they was lighting one against the other,
and were sick and tired of it. And when they wasn't
doing that they was fighting with the Mohammedans.
"You can fight those when they come into our conn
try," says Dravot. "Tell off every tenth man of your
tribes for a Frontier guard, and send two hundred at
a time to this valley to be drilled. Nobody is going
to be shot or speared any more so long as he does well,

212

UNDER THE DEODARS

and I know that you won't cheat me, because you're
white people — sons of Alexander— and not like com-
mon, black Mohammedans. You are my people, and by
God," says he, running off into English at the end —
"I'll make a damned fine Nation of you, or I'll die in
the making!"

'I can't tell all we did for the next six months, be-
cause Dravot did a lot I couldn't see the hang of, and
he learned their lingo in a way I never could. My work
was to help the people plough, and now and again go out
with some of the Army and see what the other villages
were doing, and make 'em throw rope-bridges across
the ravines which cut up the country horrid. Dravot
was very kind to me, but when he walked up and down
in the pine wood pulling that bloody red beard of his
with both fists I knew he was thinking plans I could not
advise about, and I just waited for orders.

'But Dravot never showed me disrespect before the
people. They were afraid of me and the Army, but they
loved Dan. He was the best of friends with the priests
and the Chiefs; but any one could come across the hills
with a complaint, and Dravot would hear him out fair,
and call four priests together and say what was to be
done. He used to call in Billy Fish from Bashkai, and
Pikky Kergan from Shu, and an old Chief we called
Kafuzelum — it was like enough to his real name — and
hold councils with 'em when there was any fighting to be
done in small villages. That was his Council of War,
and the four priests of Bashkai, Shu, Khawak, and
Madora was his Privy Council. Between the lot of
'em they sent me, with forty men and twenty rifles, and
sixty men carrying turquoises, into the Ghorband coun-
try to buy those hand-made Martini rifles, that come
-Hit of the Amir's workshops at Kabul, from one of the

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

213

Amir's Herati regiments that would have sold the very
teeth out of their mouths for turquoises.

'I stayed in Ghorband a month, and gave the Gov-
ernor there the pick of my baskets for hush-money,
and bribed the Colonel of the regiment some more, and,
between the two and the tribes-people, we got more than
a hundred hand-made Martinis, a hundred good Kohat
Jezails that'll throw to six hundred yards, and forty man-
loads of very bad ammunition for the rifles. I came back
with what I had, and distributed 'em among the men
that the Chiefs sent in to me to drill. Dravot was too
busy to attend to those things, but the old Army that
we first made helped me, and we turned out five hun-
dred men that could drill, and two hundred that knew
how to hold arms pretty straight. Even those cork-
screwed, hand-made guns was a miracle to them. Dravot
talked big about powder-shops and factories, walking
up and down in the pine wood when the winter was
coming on.

'"I won't make a Nation," says he. "I'll make an
Empire! These men aren't niggers; they're English!
Look at their eyes — look at their mouths. Look at
the way they stand up. They sit on chairs in their
own houses. They're the Lost Tribes, or something
like it, and they've grown to be Knglish. Ell take a
census in the spring if the priests don't get frightened.
There must be a fair two million of 'em in these hills.
The villages are full o' little children. Two million
people - two hundred and fifty thousand lighting nu n
and all English! They only want the rifles and a little
drilling. Two hundred and fifty thousand men, ready
to CUl in on Russia's right Hank when she tries for
India! Peaehey, man," he says, chewing his beard in
great hunks, "we shall be Kmperors Kmpcrors of the

%

UNDER THE DEODARS

Earth! Rajah Brooke will be a suckling to us. I'll
treat with the Viceroy on equal terms. I'll ask him to
send me twelve picked English — twelve that I know
of — to help us govern a bit. There's Mackray, Ser-
geant-pensioner at Segowli — many's the good dinner
he's given me, and his wife a pair of trousers. There's
Donkin, the Warder of Tounghoo Jail; there's hun-
dreds that I could lay my hand on if I was in India.
The Viceroy shall do it for me, I'll send a man through
in the spring for those men, and I'll write for a dispen-
sation from the Grand Lodge for what I've done as
Grand-Master. That — and all the Sniders that'll be
thrown out when the native troops in India take up
the Martini. They'll be worn smooth, but they'll do
for fighting in these hills. Twelve English, a hundred
thousand Sniders run through the Amir's country in
driblets — I'd be content with twenty thousand in one
year — and we'd be an Empire. When everything was
shipshape, I'd hand over the crown — this crown I'm wear-
ing now — to Queen Victoria on my knees, and she'd say:
'Rise up, Sir Daniel Dravot.' Oh, it's big! It's big,
I tell you ! But there's so much to be done in every place
— Bashkai, Khawak, Shu, and everywhere else."

'"What is it?" I says. "There are no more men
coming in to be drilled this autumn. Look at those fat.
black clouds. They're bringing the snow."

'"It isn't that," says Daniel, putting his hand very
hard on my shoulder; "and I don't wish to say anything
that's against you, for no other living man would have
followed me and made me what I am as you have done.
You're a first-class Commander-in-Chief, and the people
know you; but — it's a big country, and somehow you
can't help me, Peachey, in the way I want to be helped."

"'Go to your blasted priests, then!" I said, and I was

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

sorry when I made that remark, but it did hurt me sore to
find Daniel talking so superior when I'd drilled all the
men, and done all he told me.

'" Don't let's quarrel, Peachey," says Daniel without
cursing. " You're a King too, and the half of this King-
dom is yours; but can't you see, Peachey, we want
cleverer men than us now — three or four of 'em, that we
can scatter about for our Deputies. It's a hugeous great
State, and I can't always tell the right thing to do, and I
haven't time for all I want to do, and here's the winter
coming on and all." He put half his beard into his mouth,
all red like the gold of his crown.

'"I'm sorry, Daniel," says I. "I've done all I could.
I've drilled the men and shown the people how to stack
their oats better; and I've brought in those tin-ware rifles
from Ghorband — but I know what you're driving at. I
take it Kings always feel oppressed that way."

'"There's another thing too," says Dravot, walking up
and down. "The winter's coming and these people won't
be giving much trouble, and if they do we can't move
about. I want a wife."

'" For Gord's sake leave the women alone!" I says.
"We've both got all the work we can, though I am a fool.
Remember the Con track, and keep clear o' women."

'"The Contrack only lasted till such time as we was
Kings; and Kings we have been these months past," says
Dravot, weighing his crown in his hand. "You go get
a wife too", Peachey — a nice, strappin', plump girl that'll
keep you warm in the winter. They're prettier than
English girls, and we can take the pick of 'em. Boil 'em
once or twice in hot water, and they'll come out like
chicken and ham."

'"Don't tempt me!" I says. "I will not have any
dealings with a woman not till we are a dam' side more

2l6

UNDER THE DEODARS

settled than we are now. I've been doing the work o' two
men, and you've been doing the work o' three. Let's lie
off a bit, and see if we can get some better tobacco from
Afghan country and run in some good liquor; but no
women."

1 " Who's talking o' women ? " says Dravot. " I said wife
— a queen to breed a King's son for the King. A Queen
out of the strongest tribe, that'll make them your blood-
brothers, and that'll lie by your side and tell you all the
people thinks about you and their own affairs. That's
what I want."

'"Do you remember that Bengali woman I kept at
Mogul Serai when I was a plate-layer?" says I. "A fat
lot o' good she was to me. She taught me the lingo and
one or two other things; but what happened? She ran
away with the Station Master's servant and half my
month's pay. Then she turned up at Dadur Junction in
tow of a half-caste, and had the impidence to say I was
her husband — all among the drivers in the running-shed
too!"

'"We've done with that," says Dravot, "these women
are whiter than you or me, and a Queen I will have for the
winter months."

'"For the last time o' asking, Dan, do not," I says.
"It'll only bring us harm. The Bible says that Kings
ain't to waste their strength on women, 'specially when
they've got a new raw Kingdom to work over."

'"For the last time of answering I will," said Dravot,
and he went away through the pine-trees looking like a big
red devil, the sun being on his crown and beard and all.

'But getting a wne was not as easy as Dan thought.
He put it before the Council, and there was no answer till
Billy Fish said he'd better ask the girls. Dravot
damned them all round. "What's wrong with me?" he

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING 217

shouts, standing by the idol Imbra. "Am I a dog or am I
not enough of a man for your wenches? Haven't I put
the shadow of my hand over this country? Who stopped
the last Afghan raid? " It was me really, but Dravot was
too angry to remember. "Who bought your guns? Who
repaired the bridges? Who's the Grand-Master of the
sign cut in the stone?" says he, and he thumped his hand
on the block that he used to sit on" in Lodge, and at
Council, which opened like Lodge always. Billy Fish
said nothing and no more did the others. "Keep your
hair on, Dan," said I ; "and ask the girls. That's how it's
done at Home, and these people are quite English."

'"The marriage of the King is a matter of State," says
Dan, in a white-hot rage, for he could feel, I hope, that he
was going against his better mind. He walked out of the
Council-room, and the others sat still, looking at the
ground.

Billy Fish," says I to the Chief of Bashkai, "what's
the difficulty here? A straight answer to a true friend."

'" You know," says Billy Fish. "How should a man
tell you who knows everything? How can daughters of
men marry Gods or Devils? It's not proper."

'I remembered something like that in the Bible; but if,
after seeing us as long as they had, they still believed we
were Gods, it wasn't for me to undeceive them.

'"A God can do anything," says L "If the King is
fond of a girl he'll not let her die." — "She'll have to," said
Billy Fish.- "There are all sorts of Gods and Devils in
these mountains, and now and again a girl marries one of
them and isn't seen any more. Besides, you two know the
Mark cut in the stone. Only the Ciods know that. We
thought you were men till \ou showed the sign of the
Master."

'I wished then that we had explained about the loss of

\

2l8

UNDER THE DEODARS

the genuine secrets of a Master-Mason at the first go-off ;
but I said nothing. All that night there was a blowing of
horns in a little dark temple half-way down the hill, and I
heard a girl crying fit to die. One of the priests told us
that she was being prepared to marry the King.

'"Ill have no nonsense of that kind," says Dan. "I
don't want to interfere with your customs, but I'll take
my own wife." — "The girl's a little bit afraid," says the
priest. "She thinks she's going to die, and they are a-
heartening of her up down in the temple."

' " Hearten her very tender, then," says Dravot, "or I'll
hearten you with the butt of a gun so you'll never want to
be heartened again." He licked his hps, did Dan, and
stayed up walking about more than half the night, think-
ing of the wife that he was going to get in the morning. I
wasn't by any means comfortable, for I knew that deal-
ings with a woman in foreign parts, though you was a
crowned King twenty times over, could not but be risky.
I got up very early in the morning while Dravot was
asleep, and I saw the priests talking together in whispers,
and the Chiefs talking together too, and they looked at
me out of the corners of their eyes.

' " What is up, Fish?" I say to the Bashkai man, who
was wrapped up in his furs and looking splendid to behold.

'"I can't rightly say," says he; "but if you can make
the King drop all this nonsense about marriage, you'll be
doing him and me and yourself a great service."

'"That I do believe," says I. "But sure, you know,
Billy, as well as me, having fought against and for us, that
the King and me are nothing more than two of the finest
men that God Almighty ever made. Nothing more, I do
assure you."

' " That may be," says Billy Fish, " and yet I should be
sorry if it was." He sinks his head upon his great fur

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING 219

cloak for a minute and thinks. " King," says he, "be you
man or God or Devil, I'll stick by you to-day. I have
twenty of my men with me, and they will follow me.
We'll go to Bashkai until the storm blows over."

'A little snow had fallen in the night, and everything
was white except the greasy fat clouds that blew down
and down from the north. Dravot came out with his
crown on his head, swinging his arms and stamping his
feet, and looking more pleased than Punch.

' " For the last time, drop it Dan," says I in a whisper.
" Billy. Fish here says that there will be a row."

'"A row among my people!" says Dravot. "Not
much. Peachey, you're a fool not to get a wife too.
Where's the girl?" says he with a voice as loud as the
braying of a jackass. " Call up all the Chiefs and priests,
and let the Emperor see if his wife suits him."

1 There was no need to call any one. They were al 1 there
leaning on their guns and spears round the clearing in the
centre of the pine wood. A lot of priests went down to
the little temple to bring up the girl, and the horns blew
fit to wake the dead. Billy Fish saunters round and gets
as close to Daniel as he could, and behind him stood his
twenty men with matchlocks. Not a man of them under
six feet. I was next to Dravot, and behind me was
twenty men of the regular Army. Up comes the girl, and
a strapping wench she was, covered with silver and tur-
quoises bat white as death, and looking back every minute
at the priests.

'"She'll do," said Dan, looking her over. "What's to
be afraid of, lass? Come and kiss me." Be puts his arm
round her. She shuts her eyes, gives a bit of a squeak,
and down goes her face in the side of Dan's flaming red
beard.

'"The slut's bitten me!" says he, clapping his hand to

■

220

UNDER THE DEODARS

his neck, and, sure enough, his hand was red with blood,
Billy Fish and two of his matchlock-men catches hold of
Dan by the shoulders and drags him into the Bashkai lot,
while the priests howls in their lingo, — "Neither God nor
Devil but a man ! " I was all taken aback, for a priest cut
at me in front, and the Army began firing into the Bash-
kai men.

' " God A'mighty !" says Dan. " What is the meaning
o' this?"

' " Come back ! Come away ! " says Billy Fish. " Ruin
and Mutiny is the matter. We'll break for Bashkai if we
can."

* I tried to give some sort of orders to my men — the men
o' the regular Army — but it was no use, so I fired into the
brown of 'em with an English Martini and drilled three
beggars in a line. The volley was full of shouting, howling
creatures, and every soul was shrieking, "Not a God nor a
Devil but only a man!" The Bashkai troops stuck to
Billy Fish all they were worth, but their matchlocks wasn't
half as good as the Kabul breech-loaders, and four of them
dropped. Dan was bellowing like a bull, for he was very
wrathy; and Billy Fish had a hard job to prevent him
running out at the crowd.

'"We can't stand," says Billy Fish. "Make a run for
it down the valley ! The whole place is against us." The
matchlock-men ran, and we went down the valley in spite
of Dravot. He was swearing horrible and crying out he
was a King. The priests rolled great stones on us, and the
regular Army fired hard, and there wasn't more than six
men, not counting Dan, Billy Fish, and Me, that came
down to the bottom of the valley alive.

'Then they stopped firing and the horns in the temple
blew again. " Come away — for Gord's sake comeaway ! "
says Billy Fish. "They'll send runners out to all the vil-

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

221

lages before ever we get to Bashkai. I can protect you
there, but I can't do anything now."

'My own notion is that Dan began to go mad in his
head from that hour. He stared up and down like a
stuck pig. Then he was all for walking back alone
and killing the priests with his bare hands; which he
could have done. "An Emperor am I," says Daniel,
"and next year I shall be a Knight of the Queen.'

'"All right, Dan," says I; "but come along now while
there's time."

'"It's your fault," says he, "for not looking after
your Army better. There was mutiny in the midst,
and you didn't know — you damned engine-driving,
plate-laying, missionary 's-pass-hunting hound!" He
sat upon a rock and called me every foul name he could
lay tongue to. I was too heart-sick to care, though it
was all his foolishness that brought the smash.

'"I'm sorry, Dan," says I, "but there's no accounting
for natives. This business is our Fifty-seven. Maybe
we'll make something out of it yet, when we've got to
Bashkai."

'"Let's get to Bashkai, then," says Dan, "and, by
God, when I come back here again I'll sweep the valley
so there isn't a bug in a blanket left!"

'We walked all that day, and all that night Dan was
stumping up and down on the snow, chewing his beard
and muttering to himself.

'"There's no hope o' getting clear," said Hilly Fish.
"The priests will have sent runners to the villages to
say that you are only men. Why didn't you stiek on
as Gods till things was more settled? I'm a dead man,"
says Billy Fish, and he throws himself down on tin- snow
and begins to pray to his Gods.

'Next morning we was in a cruel bad countr) .ill

222

UNDER THE DEODARS

up and down, no level ground at all, and no food either.
The six Bashkai men looked at Billy Fish hungry- way
as if they wanted to ask something, but they said never
a word. At noon we came to the top of a flat mountain
all covered with snow, and when we climbed up into it,
behold, there was an Army in position waiting in the
middle !

'"The runners have been very quick," says Billy
Fish, with a little bit of a laugh. "They are waiting for
us."

'Three or four men began to fire from the enemy's
side, and a chance shot took Daniel in the calf of the
leg. That brought him to his senses. He looks across
the snow at the Army, and sees the rifles that we had
brought into the country.

'"We're done for," says he. "They are Englishmen,
these people, — and it's my blasted nonsense that has
brought you to this. Get back, Billy Fish, and take
your men away; you've done what you could, and now
cut for it. Carnehan," says he, "shake hands with me
and go along with Billy. Maybe they won't kill you.
I'll go and meet 'em alone. It's me that did it. Me,
the King!"

'"Go!" says I. "Go to Hell, Dan. I'm with you
here. Billy Fish, you clear out, and we two will meet
those folk."

'"I'm a Chief," says Billy Fish, quite quiet. "I stay
with you. My men can go."

'The Bashkai fellows didn't wait for a second word
but ran off, and Dan and Me and Billy Fish walked
across to where the drums were drumming and the
horns were horning. It was cold — awful cold. I've got
that cold in the back of my head now. There's a lump
of it there.'

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

223

The punkah-coolies had gone to sleep. Two kero-
sene lamps were blazing in the office, and the perspira-
tion poured down my face and splashed on the blotter
as I leaned forward. Carnehan was shivering, and I
feared that his mind might go. I wiped my face, took
a fresh grip of the piteously mangled hands, and said,
'What happened after that?'

The momentary shift of my eyes had broken the clear
current.

'What was you pleased to say?' whined Carnehan.
' They took them without any sound. Not a little whis-
per all along the snow, not though the King knocked
down the first man that set hand on him — not though old
Peachey fired his last cartridge into the brown of 'em.
Not a single solitary sound did those swines make. They
just closed up tight, and I tell you their furs stunk.
There was a man called Billy Fish, a good friend of us
all, and they cut his throat, Sir, then and there, like
a pig; and the King kicks up the bloody snow and says:
"We've had a dashed fur run for our money. What's
coming next?" But Peachey, Peachey Taliaferro, I
tell you, Sir, in confidence as betwixt two friends, he
lost his head, Sir. No, he didn't neither. The King
lost his head, so he did, all along o' one of those cunning
rope-bridges. Kindly let me have the paper-cutter,
Sir. It tilted this way. They marched him a mile
across that snow to a rope-bridge over a ravine with a
river at the bottom. You may have seen such. They
prodded him behind like an ox. "Damn your eves!"
says the King. " D'you suppose I can't die like a gentle-
man?" He turns to Peachey — Peachey that was crying
like a child. "I've brought you to this, Peachey," says
he. " Brought you out of your happy life to be killed
in kafiristan where you was late Commander-in-Chief of

224

UNDER THE DEODARS .

the Emperor's forces. Say you forgive me, Peachey."— •
"I do," says Peachey. " Fully and freely do I forgive
you, Dan." — " Shake hands, Peachey," says he. "I'm
going now." Out he goes, looking neither right nor
left, and when he was plumb in the middle of those
dizzy . dancing ropes, — "Cut, you beggars," he shouts,
and they cut, and old Dan fell, turning round and round
and round, twenty thousand miles, for he took half an
hour to fall till he struck the water, and I could see
his body caught on a rock with the gold crown close
beside.

' But do you know what they did to Peachey between
two pine-trees? They crucified him, Sir, as Peachey'^
hands will show. They used wooden pegs for his hands
and his feet; and he didn't die. He hung there and
screamed, and they took him down next day, and said
it was a miracle that he wasn't dead. They took him
down — poor old Peachey that hadn't done them any
harm — that hadn't done them any '

He rocked to and fro and wept bitterly, wiping his
eyes with the back of his scarred hands and moaning
like a child for some ten minutes.

' They was cruel enough to feed him up in the temple,
because they said he was more of a God than old Daniel
that was a man. Then they turned him out on the
snow, and told him to go home, and Peachey came
home in about a year, begging along the roads quite
safe; for Daniel Dravot he walked before and said:
"Come along, Peachey. It's a big thing we're doing."
The mountains they danced at night, and the mountains
they tried to fall on Peachey's head, but Dan he held up
his hand, and Peachey came along bent double. He
never let go of Dan's hand, and he never let go of Dan's
head. They gave it to him as a present in the temple,

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

225

to remind him not to come again, and though the crown
was pure gold, and Peachey was starving, never would
Peachey sell the same. You knew Dravot, Sir! You
knew Right Worshipful Brother Dravot! Lpok at him
now!'

He fumbled in the mass of rags round his bent waist;
brought out a black horsehair bag embroidered with
silver thread; and shook therefrom on to my table — the
dried, withered head of Daniel Dravot! The morning
sun that had long been paling the lamps struck the red
beard and blind sunken eyes; struck, too, a heavy circlet
of gold studded with raw turquoises, that Carnehan
placed tenderly on the battered temples.

'You be'old now,' said Carnehan, 'the Emperor in
his 'abit as he lived — the King of Kafiristan with his
crown upon his head. Poor old Daniel that was a mon-
arch once!'

I shuddered, for, in spite of defacements manifold,
I recognised the head of the man of Marwar Junction.
Carnehan rose to go. I attempted to stop him. He
was not fit to walk abroad. 'Let me take away the
whiskey, and give me a little money,' he gasped. 'I
was a King once. I'll go to the Deputy Commissioner
and ask to set in the Poorhouse lill I get my health.
No, thank you, I can't wait till you get a carriage lor
me. I've urgent private affairs in the south at
Marwar.r

He shambled out of the office and departed in the
direction of the Deputy Commissioner's house. That
day at noon I had occasion to go down the blinding
hot Mall, and I saw a (rooked man crawling along the
white dust of the roadside, his hat in his hand, quaver-
ing dolorously after the fashion of street singers at
Home. There was not a soul in sight , and he was out

1

226

UNDER THE DEODARS

of all possible earshot of the houses. And he sang
through his nose, turning his head from right to left: —

'The Son of Man goes forth to war,

A golden crown to gain;
His blood-red banner streams afar —
Who follows in his train? '

I waited to hear no more, but put the poor wretch
into my carriage and drove him off to the nearest mis-
sionary for eventual .transfer to the Asylum. He re-
peated the hymn twice while he was with me whom he
did not in the least recognise, and I left him singing it
to the missionary.

Two days later I enquired after his welfare of the
Superintendent of the Asylum.

'He was admitted suffering from sun-stroke. He
died early yesterday morning,' said the Superintend-
ent. 'Is it true that he was half an hour bare-headed
in the sun at midday?'

'Yes,' said I, 'but do you happen to know if he had
anything upon him by any chance when he died?'

'Not to my knowledge,' said the Superintendento

And there the matter rests.

WEE WILLIE WINKIE

'An officer and a gentleman.'

His full name was Percival William Williams, but
he picked up the other name in a nursery-book, and
that was the end of the christened titles. His mother's
ayah called him Willie-Baba, but as he never paid the
faintest attention to anything that the ayah said, her
wisdom did not help matters.

His father was the Colonel of the 195th, and as soon
as Wee Willie Winkie was old enough to understand
what Military Discipline meant, Colonel Williams put
him under it. There was no other way of managing
the child. When he was good for a week, he drew good-
conduct pay; and when he was bad, he was deprived
of his good-conduct stripe. Generally he was bad, for
India offers many chances of going wrong to little six-
year-olds.

Children resent familiarity from strangers, and Wee
Willie Winkie was a very particular child. Once he
accepted an acquaintance, he was graciously pleased to
thaw. He accepted Brandis, a subaltern of the 195th,
on sight." Brandis was having tea at the Colonel's,
and Wee Willie Winkie entered strong in the possession
of a good-conduct badge won for not chasing the hens
round the compound. He regarded Brandis with grav-
ity for at least ten minutes, and then delivered himself
of his opinion.

4 1 like you,' said he slowly, getting off his (hair and

227

1

228

UNDER THE DEODARS

coming over to Brandis. 'I like you. I shall call you
Coppy, because of your hair. Do you mind being called
Coppy? It is because of ve hair, you know.'

Here was one of the most embarrassing of Wee Willie
Wiiikie's peculiarities. He would look at a stranger
for some time, and then, without warning or explanation,
would give him a name. And the name stuck. No
regimental penalties could break Wee Willie Winkie
of this habit. He lost his good-conduct badge for
christening the Commissioner's wife 'Pobs'; but noth-
ing that the Colonel could do made the Station forego
the nickname, and Mrs. Collen remained 'Pobs' till the
end of her ^ay. So Brandis was christened 'Coppy,'
and rose, therefore, in the estimation of the regiment.

If Wee Willie Winkie took an interest in any one, the
fortunate man was envied alike by the mess and the rank
and file. And in their envy lay no suspicion of self-inter-
est. 1 The Colonel's son' was idolised on his own merits
entirely. Yet Wee Willie Winkie was not lovely. His
face was permanently freckled, as his legs were per-
manently scratched, and in spite of his mother's almost
tearful remonstrances he had insisted upon having his
long yellow locks cut short in the military fashion. 'I
want my hair like Sergeant Tummil's,' said Wee Willie
Winkie, and, his father abetting, the sacrifice was ac-
complished.

Three weeks after the bestowal of his youthful affec-
tions on Lieutenant Brandis — henceforward to be called
' Coppy ' for the sake of brevity — Wee Willie Winkie was
destined to behold strange things and far beyond his com-
prehension.

Coppy returned his liking with interest. Coppy had
let him wear for five rapturous minutes his own big sword
—just as tall as Wee Willie Winkie. Coppy had promised

WEE WILLIE WINKIE

2 2Q

him a terrier puppy; and Coppy had permitted him to wit-
ness the miraculous operation of shaving. Nay, more —
Coppy had said that even he, Wee Willie Winkie, would
rise in time to the ownership of a box of shiny knives, a
silver soap-box and a silver-handled 'sputter-brush,' as
Wee Willie Winkie called it. Decidedly, there was no one
except his father, who could give or take away good-con-
duct badges at pleasure, half so wise, strong, and valiant
as Coppy with the Afghan and Egyptian medals on his
breast. Why, then, should Coppy be guilty of the un-
manly weakness of kissing — vehemently kissing — a 'big
girl/ Miss Allardyce to wit? In the course of a morning
ride, Wee Willie Winkie had seen Coppy so doing, and,
like the gentleman he was, had promptly wheeled round
and cantered back to his groom, lest the groom should
also see.

Under ordinary circumstances he would have spoken to
his father, but he felt instinctively that this was a matter
on which Coppy ought first to be consulted.

'Coppy,' shouted Wee Willie Winkie, reining up out-
side that subaltern's bungalow early one morning -'I
want to see you, Coppy!'

'Come in, young 'un,' returned Coppy, who was at
early breakfast in the midst of his dogs. 'What mischief
have you been getting into now?'

Wee Willie Winkie had done nothing notoriously bad
for three days, and so stood on a pinnacle of virtue.

'I've been doing nothing bad,' said he, curling himself
into a long chair with a studious affectation of the Colo-
nel's languor after a hot parade. lie buried his freckled
nose in a tea-cup and, with eyes staring roundly over the
rim, asked : ' I say, ( 'oppy, is it pwopet to kiss big girls? '

' Hy Jove ! You're beginning early. Who do you want
toki^J'

UNDER THE DEODARS

'No one. My muvver's always kissing me if I don't
stop her. If it isn't pwoper, how was you kissing Major
Allardyce's big girl last morning, by ve canal? '

Coppy's brow wrinkled. He and Miss Allardyce had
with great craft managed to keep their engagement secret
for a fortnight. There were urgent and imperative
reasons why Major Allardyce should not know how
matters stood for at least another month, and this small
marplot had discovered a great deal too much.

'I saw you/ said Wee Willie Winkie calmly. 'But ve
sais didn't see. I said, "Hutjao ! " '

' Oh, you had that much sense, you young Rip,' groaned
poor Coppy, half amused and half angry. 'And how
many people may you have told about it? 9

' Only me myself. You didn't tell when I twied to wide
ve buffalo ven my pony was lame; and I fought you
wouldn't like.'

'Winkie,' said Coppy enthusiastically, shaking the
small hand, 'you're the best of good fellows. Look here,
you can't understand all these things. One of these days
— hang it, how can I make you see it! — I'm going to
marry Miss Allardyce, and then she'll be Mrs. Coppy, a?
you say. If your young mind is so scandalised at the idea
of kissing big girls, go and tell your father.'

'What will happen?' said Wee Willie Winkie, who
firmly believed that his father was omnipotent.

£I shall get into trouble,' said Coppy, playing his trump
card with an appealing look at the holder of the ace.

' Ven I won't,' said Wee Willie Winkie briefly. ' But my
faver says it's un-man-ly to be always kissing, and I
didn't fink you'd do vat, Coppy.'

' I'm not always kissing, old chap. It's only now ami
then, and when you're bigger you'll do it too. You,
father meant it's not good for little boys.'

WEE WILLIE WINKIE 231

'Ah!' said Wee Willie Winkie, now fully enlightened.
It's like ve sputter-brush? '
' Exactly,' said Coppy gravely.

'But I don't fink I'll ever want to kiss big girls, nor no
one, 'cept my muwer. And I must vat, you know. '
• There was a long pause, broken by Wee Willie Winkie.
' Are you fond of vis big girl, Coppy? '
'Awfully!' said Coppy.

' Fonder van you are of Bell or ve Butcha — or me? '

'It's in a different way,' said Coppy. 'You see, one of
these days Miss Allardyce will belong to me, but you'll
grow up and command the Regiment and — all sorts of
things. It's quite different, you see.'

' Very well,' said Wee Willie Winkie, rising. ' If you're
fond of ve big girl, I won't tell any one. I must go now.'

Coppy rose and escorted his small guest to the door,
adding — 'You're the best of little fellows, Winkie. I tell
you what. In thirty days from now you can tell if you
like — tell any one you like.'

Thus the secret of the Brandis-Allardyce engagement
was dependent on a little child's word. Coppy, who knew
Wee Willie Winkie's idea of truth, was at ease, for be felt
that he would not break promises. Wee W illie Winkie
betrayed a special and unusual interest in Miss Allar-
dyce, and, slowly revolving round that embarrassed
young lady, was used to regard her gravely with unwink-
ing eye. lie was trying to discover why Coppy should
have kissed her. She was not half so nice as his own
mother. On the other hand, she was Coppy 's property,
and would in time belong to him. Therefore it behooved
him to treat her with as much respect as Coppy 's big
sword or shiny pistol.

The idea that he shared a great secret in common with
Coppy kept Wee Willie Winkie unusually virtuous for

232

UNDER THE DEODARS

three weeks. Then the Old Adam broke out, and he
made what he called a ' camp-fire' at the bottom of the
garden. How could he have foreseen that the flying
sparks would have lighted the Colonel's little hay-rick
and consumed a week's store for the horses? Sudden and
swift was the punishment — deprivation of the good-con-
duct badge and, most sorrowful of all, two days' confine-
ment to barracks — the house and veranda — coupled with
the withdrawal of the light of his father's countenance.

He took the sentence like the man he strove to be, drew
himself up with a quivering under-lip, saluted, and, once
clear of the room, ran to weep bitterly in his nursery —
called by him 'my quarters.' Coppy came in the after-
noon and attempted to console the culprit.

'I'm under awwest,' said Wee Willie Winkie mourn-
fully, 'and I didn't ought to speak to you.'

Very early the next morning he climbed on to the roof
of the house — that was not forbidden — and beheld Miss
Allardyce going for a ride.

' Where are you going? ' cried Wee Willie Winkie.

'Across the river,' she answered, and trotted forward.

Now the cantonment in which the 195th lay was
bounded on the north by a river — dry in the winter.
From his earliest years, Wee Willie Winkie had been for-
bidden to go across the river, and had noted that even
Coppy — the almost almighty Coppy — had never set foot
beyond it. Wee Willie Winkie had once been read to,
out of a big blue book, the history of the Princess and the
Goblins — a most wonderful tale of a land where the
Goblins were always warring with the children of men
until they were defeated by one Curdie. Ever since that
date it seemed to him that the bare black and purple hills
across the river were inhabited by Goblins, and, in truth,
every one had said that there lived the Bad Men. Even

WEE WILLIE WINKIE 233

In his own house the lower halves of the windows were
covered with green paper on account of the Bad Men who
might, if allowed clear view, fire into peaceful drawing-
rooms and comfortable bedrooms. Certainly, beyond the
river, which was the end of all the Earth, lived the Bad
Men. And here was Major Allardyce's big girl, Coppy's
property, preparing to venture into their borders! What
would Coppy say if anything happened to her? If the
Goblins ran off with her as they did with Curdie's Prin-
cess? She must at all hazards be turned back.

The house was still. Wee Willie Winkie reflected for a
moment on the very terrible wrath of his father; and then
— broke his arrest! It was a crime unspeakable. The
low sun threw his shadow, very large and very black, 011
the trim garden-paths, as he went down to the stables and
ordered his pony. It seemed to him in the hush of the
dawn that all the big world had been bidden to stand still
and look at Wee Willie Winkie guilty of mutiny. The
drowsy sais gave him his mount, and, since the one great
sin made all others insignificant, Wee Willie Winkie said
that he was going to ride over to Coppy Sahib, and went
out at a foot:pace, stepping on the soft mould of the flow-
er-borders.

The devastating track of the pony's feet was the last
misdeed that cut him off from all sympathy of Humanity.
IJe turned into the road, leaned forward, and rode-as last
as the pony could put foot to the ground in the direction
of the river:

But the liveliest of twelve-two ponies can do little
against the long canter of a Waler. Miss Allardyce was
far ahead, had passed through the crops, beyond the
Police-posts, when all the guards were asleep, and her
mount was scattering the pebbles of the river bed as W ee
Willie Winkie left the cantonment and British India be-

234 UNDER THE DEODARS

hind him. Bowed forward and still flogging, Wee Willie
Winkie shot into Afghan territory, and could just see Miss
Allardyce a black speck, flickering across the stony plain.
The reason of her wandering was simple enough. Coppy,
in a tone of too-hastily-assumed authority, had told her
over night that she must not ride out by the river. And
she had gone to prove her own spirit and teach Coppy a
lesson.

Almost at the foot of the inhospitable hills, Wee Willie
Winkie saw the Waler blunder and come down heavily.
Miss Allardyce struggled clear, but her ankle had been
severely twisted, and she could not stand. Having fully
shown her spirit, she wept, and was surprised by the ap-
parition of a white, wide-eyed child in khaki, on a nearly
spent pony.

'Are you badly, badly hurted?' shouted Wee Willie
Winkie, as soon as he was within range. 'You didn't
ought to be here.'

'I don't know,' said Miss Allardyce ruefully, ignoring
the reproof. ' Good gracious, child, what are you doing
here? '

'You said you was going acwoss ve wiver,' panted Wee
Willie Winkie, throwing himself off his pony. 'And no-
body— not even Coppy — must go acwoss ve wiver, and I
came after you ever so hard, but you wouldn't stop, and
now you've hurted yourself, and Coppy will be angwy wiv
me, and — I've bwoken my awwest! I've bwoken my
awwest!'

The future Colonel of the 195th sat down and sobbed.
In spite of the pain in her ankle the girl was moved.

'Have you ridden all the way from cantonments,
little man? What for?'

'You belonged to, Coppy. Coppy told me so!'
wailed Wee Willie Winkie disconsolately 'I saw him

WEE WILLIE WINKIE

hissing you, and he said he was fonder of you van Bell
or ve Butcha or me. And so I came. You must get
up and come back. You didn't ought to be here. Vis
is a bad place, and I've bwoken my awwest.'

£I can't move, Winkie,' said Miss Allardyce, with a
groan. ' I've hurt my foot. What shall I do?'

She showed a readiness to weep anew, which steadied
Wee Willie Winkie, who had been brought up to be-
lieve that tears were the depth of unmanliness. Still,
when one is as great a sinner as Wee Willie Winkie, even
a man may be permitted to break down.

'Winkie,' said Miss Allardyce, 'when you've rested
a little, ride back and tell them to send out something
to carry me back in. It hurts fearfully.'

The child sat still for a little time and Miss Allardyce
closed her eyes; the pain was nearly making her faint.
She was roused by Wee Willie Winkie tying up the
reins on his pony's neck and setting it free with a vicious
cut of his whip that made it whicker. The little animal
headed towards the cantonments.

'Oh, Winkie! What are you doing? '

'Hush!' said Wee Willie Winkie. 'Vere's a man
coming —one of ve Bad Men. I must stay wiv you.
My faver says a man must always look after a girl.
Jack will go home, and ven vey'll come and look for
us. Vat's why I let him go.'

Not oife man but two or three had appeared from
behind the rocks of the hills, and the heart of Wee Willie
Winkie sank within him, for just in this maimer were
the Goblins wont to steal out and vex Cardie's soul.
Thus had they played in Curdie'l garden, he had seen
the picture, and thus had they frightened the Princess's
nurse. He heard them talking to each other, and rec-
ognised with joy the bastard Pushto that he had picked

UNDER THE DEODARS

up from one of his father's grooms lately dismissed.
People who spoke that tongue could not be the Bad Men.
They were only natives after all.

They came up to the bowlders on which MissAllar-
dyce's horse had blundered.

Then rose from the rock Wee Willie Winkie, child
of the Dominant Race, aged six and three-quarters, and
said briefly and emphatically 'Jao!' The pony had
crossed the river-bed.

The men laughed, and laughter from natives was the
one thing Wee Willie Winkie could not tolerate. He
asked them what they wanted and why they did not
depart. Other men with most evil faces and crooked-
stocked guns crept out of the shadows of the hills, till,
soon, Wee Willie Winkie was face to face with an audi-
ence some twenty strong. Miss Allardyce screamed.

'Who are you?' said one of the men.

'I am the Colonel Sahib's son, and my order is that
you go at once. You .black men are frightening the
Miss Sahib. One of you must run into cantonments
and take the news that the Miss Sahib has hurt herself,
and that the Colonel's son is here with her.'

'Put our feet into the trap?' was the laughing reply.
'Hear this boy's speech!'

'Say that I sent you — I, the Colonel's son. They
will give you money.'

'What is the use of this talk? Take up the child
and the girl, and we can at least ask for the ransom.
Ours are the villages on the heights,' said a voice in the
background.

These were the Bad Men — worse than Goblins — and
it needed all Wee Willie Winkie's training to prevent
him from bursting into tears. But he felt that to cry
before a native, excepting only his mother's ayah, would

WEE WILLIE WINKIE

237

be an infamy greater than any mutiny. Moreover, he,
as future Colonel of the 195th, had that grim regiment
at his back.

'Are you going to carry us away?' said Wee Willie
Winkie, very blanched and uncomfortable.

4 Yes, my little Sahib Bahadur,'' said the tallest of the
men, 'and eat you afterwards.'

'That is child's talk,' said Wee Willie Winkie. 'Men
do not eat men.'

A yell of laughter interrupted him, but he went on
firmly — 'And if you do carry us away, I tell you that
all my regiment will come up in a day and kill you all
without leaving one. Who will take my message to the
Colonel Sahib?'

Speech in any vernacular — and Wee Willie Winkie
had a colloquial acquaintance with three — was easy to
the boy who could not yet manage his 'r's' and 'th's'
aright.

Another man joined the conference, crying: 'O fool-
ish men! What this babe says is true. He is the heart's
heart of those white troops. For the sake of peace let
them go both, for if he be taken, the regiment will break
loose and gut the valley. Our villages are in the valley,
and we shall not escape. That regiment are devils.
They broke Khoda Yar's breastbone with kicks when he
tried to take the rifles; and if we touch this child they will
fire and rape and plunder for a month, till nothing re-
mains. Better to send a man hack to take the message
and get a reward. I say that this child is their God, and
that they will spare none of us, nor our women, if we
harm him.'

It was Din Mahonuned, the dismissed groom of the
Colonel, who made the diversion, and an angry and
heated discussion followed. Wee Willie \\ inkie, stand-

■

238

UNDER THE DEODARS

ing over Miss Allardyce, waited the upshot. Surely
his 'wegiment,' his own 'wegiment,' would not desert
him if they knew of his extremity.

*********

The riderless pony brought the news to the 195th,
though there had been consternation in the Colonel's
household for an hour before. The little beast came in
through the parade-ground in front of the main bar-
racks, where the men were settling down to play Spoil-
five till the afternoon. Devlin, the Colour-Sergeant of
E Company, glanced at the empty saddle and tumbled
through the barrack-rooms, kicking up each Room Cor-
poral as he passed. 'Up, ye beggars! There's some-
thing happened to the Colonel's son,' he shouted.

'He couldn't fall off! S'elp me, 'e couldn't fall off,'
blubbered a drummer-boy. 'Go an' hunt acrost the
river. He's over there if he's anywhere, an' maybe
those Pathans have got 'im. For the love o' Gawd
don't look for 'im in the nullahs! Let's go over the
river.'

'There's sense in Mott yet,' said Devlin. 'E Com-
pany, double out to the river — sharp!'

So E Company, in its shirt-sleeves mainly, doubled
for the dear life, and in the rear toiled the perspiring
Sergeant, adjuring it to double yet faster. The canton-
ment was alive with the men of the 195th hunting for
Wee Willie Winkie, and the Colonel finally overtook E
Company, far too exhausted to swear, struggling in the
pebbles of the river-bed.

Up the hill under which Wee Willie Winkie's Bad
Men were discussing the wisdom of carrying off the
child and the girl, a look-out fired two shots.

'What have I said?' shouted Din Mahommed. 'There

WEE WILLIE WINKIE 239

is the warning! The pulton are out already and are
coming across the plain! Get away! Let us not be
seen with the boy ! '

The men waited for an instant, and then, as another
shot was fired, withdrew into the hills, silently as they
had appeared.

'The wegiment is coming,' said Wee Willie Winkie
confidently to Miss Allardyce, 'and it's all wight.
Don't cwy!'

He needed the advice himself, for ten minutes later,
when his father came up, he was weeping bitterly with
his head in Miss Allardyce's lap.

And the men of the 195th carried him home with
shouts and rejoicings; and Coppy, who had ridden a
horse into a lather, met him, and, to his intense dis-
gust, kissed him openly in the presence of the men.

But there was balm for his dignity. His father as-
sured him that not only would the breaking of arrest
be condoned, but that the good -conduct badge would
be restored as soon as his mother could sew it on his
blouse-sleeve. Miss Allardyce had told the Colonel a
story that made him proud of his son.

'She belonged to you, Coppy,' said Wee Willie Winkie,
indicating Miss Allardyce with a grimy forefinger. 'I
knew she didn't ought to go acwoss ve wiver, and I knew
ve wegiment would come to me if I sent Jack home'

'You'rt a hero, Winkie,' said Coppy 'a pukka hero!'

'I don't know what vat means,' said Wee Willie
Winkie, 'but you mustn't call me Winkie any no more.
I'm Pen ival Willam WilTams.'

And in this mamn r did Wee Willie Winkie enter into
Ins manhood.

BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP

Baa Baa, Black Sheep,

Have you any wool?

Yes, Sir, yes, Sir, three bags full.

One for the Master, one for the Dame —

None for the Little Boy that cries down the lane.

Nursery Rhyme.

The First Bag

When I was in my father's house, I was in a better place.

They were putting Punch to bed — the ayah and the
hamal and Meeta, the big Surti boy, with the red and
gold turban. Judy, already tucked inside her mosquito-
curtains, was nearly asleep. Punch had been allowed
to stay up for dinner. Many privileges had been ac-
corded to Punch within the last ten days, and a greater
kindness from the people of his world had encompassed
his ways and works, which were mostly obstreperous.
He sat on the edge of his bed and swung his bare legs
defiantly.

'Punch-M?a going to bye-lo?' said the ayah sug-
gestively.

'No,' said Punch. 'Punch-fra&a wants the story
about the Ranee that was turned into a tiger. Meeta
must tell it, and the hamal shall hide behind the door
and make tiger-noises at the proper time.'

'But Judy -baba will wake up,' said the ayah.

1 Judy -baba is waked,' piped a small voice from the

240

BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP

241

mosquito-curtains. 'There was a Ranee that lived at
Delhi. Go on, Meeta,' and she fell fast asleep again
while Meeta began the story.

Never had Punch secured the telling of that tale
with so little opposition. He reflected for a long time.
The hamal made the tiger-noises in twenty different
keys.

"Top!' said Punch authoritatively. 'Why doesn't
Papa come in and say he is going to give me put- put ?'

'Vunch-baba is going away,' said the ayah. 'In an-
other week there will be no Funch-baba to pull my hair
any more.' She sighed softly, for the boy of the house-
hold was very dear to her heart.

'Up the Ghauts in a train?' said Punch, standing on
his bed. 'All the way to Nassick where the Ranee-
Tiger lives?'

'Not to Nassick this year, little Sahib,' said Meeta,
lifting him on his shoulder. 'Down to the sea
where the cocoanuts are thrown, and across the
sea in a big ship. Will you take Meeta with you to
Belait V

'You shall all come,' said Punch, from the height of
Meeta's strong arms. 'Meeta and the ayah and the
hamal and Bhini-in-the-Garden, and the salaam-Cap-
tain-Sahib-snake-man.'

There was no mockery in Meeta's voice when he
replied— ' Great is the Sahib's favour,' and laid (lie
little man down in the bed, while the ayah, sitting in
the moonlight at the doorway, lulled him to sleep with
an interminable canticle such as they sing in the Roman
Catholic Church at Parel. Punch curled himself into
a ball and slept,

Next morning Judy shouted that there was a rat in
the nursery, and thus he forgot to tell her the wonder-

242

UNDER THE DEODARS

ful news. It did not much matter, for Judy was only
three and she would not have understood. But Punch
was five; and he knew that going to England would be
much nicer than a trip to Nassick.

*«J> «A# *1* «±* «i* xj*

*J* *I* *I» *J* *J» »J»

Papa and Mamma sold the brougham and the piano,
and stripped the house, and curtailed the allowance of
crockery for the daily meals, and took long council to-
gether over a bundle of letters bearing the Rocklington
postmark.

' The worst of it is that one can't be certain of any-
thing/ said Papa, pulling his moustache. 'The letters in
themselves are excellent, and the terms are moderate
enough.'

'The worst of it is that the children will grow up
away from me,' thought Mamma: but she did not say it
aloud.

'We' are only one case among hundreds,' said
Papa bitterly. ' You shall go Home again in five years,
dear.'

' Punch will be ten then — and Judy eight. Oh, how long
and long and long the time will be! And we have to
leave them among strangers.'

'Punch is a cheery little chap. He's sure to make
friends wherever he goes.'

'And who could help loving my Ju? '

They were standing over the cots in the nursery late at
night, and I think that Mamma was crying softly. After
Papa had gone away, she knelt down by the side of Judy's
cot. The ayah saw her and put up a prayer that the
memsahib might never find the love of her children taken
away from her and given to a stranger.

Mamma's own prayer was a slightly illogical one.

BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP

243

Summarised it ran: 'Let strangers love my children and
be as good to them as I should be, but let me preserve
their love and their confidence for ever and ever. Amen.'
Punch scratched himself in his sleep, and Judy moaned a
little.

Next day, they all went down to the sea, and there was
a scene at the Apollo Bunder when Punch discovered that
Meeta could not come too, and Judy learned that the ayah
must be left behind. But Punch found a thousand fasci-
nating things in the rope, block, and steam-pipe line on the
big P. and O. Steamer long before Meeta and the ayah
had dried their tears.

' Come back, Punch-foz6a,' said the ayah.

' Come back,' said Meeta, ' and be a Burra Sahib ' (a big
man).

' Yes,' said Punch, lifted up in his father's arms to wave
good-bye. 'Yes, I will come back, and I will be a Burra
Sahib Bahadur ! ' (a very big man indeed) .

At the end of the first day Punch demanded to
be set down in England, which he was certain must
be close at hand. Next day there was a merry breeze,
and Punch was very sick. 'When I come back to
Bombay,' said Punch on his recovery, 'I will come
by the road — in a broom-gharri. This is a very naughty
ship.'

The Swedish boatswain consoled him, and he modified
his opinidhs as the voyage went on. There was so much
to see and* to handle and ask questions about that Punch
nearly forgot the ayah and Meeta and the hanial, and with
difficulty remembered a few words of the Hindustani, once
his second-speech.

Hut Judy was much worse. The day before the steamer
reached Southampton, Mamma asked her if she would
not like to see the ayah again. Judy's blue eyes turned

0

244

UNDER THE DEODARS

to the stretch of sea that had swallowed all her tiny past,
and said : ' A yah ! What ayah ? 1

Mamma cried over her and Punch marvelled. It was
then that he heard for the first time Mamma's passionate
appeal to him never to let Judy forget Mamma. Seeing
that Judy was young, ridiculously young, and that
Mamma, every evening for four weeks past, had come
into the cabin to sing her and Punch to sleep with
a mysterious tune that he called 'Sonny, my soul/
Punch could not understand what Mamma meant.
But he strove to do his duty; for, the moment Mamma
left the cabin, he said to Judy: 'Ju, you bemember
Mamma? '

' 'Torse I do,' said Judy.

'Then always bemember Mamma, 'r else I won't give
you the paper ducks that the red-haired Captain Sahib
cut out for me.'

So Judy promised always to 'bemember Mamma.'

Many and many a time was Mamma's command laid
upon Punch, and Papa would say the same thing with an
insistence that awed the child.

'You must make haste and learn to write, Punch,' said
Papa, 'and then you'll be able to write letters to us in
Bombay.'

'I'll come into your room,' said Punch, and Papa
choked.

Papa and Mamma, were always choking in those days.
If Punch took Judy to task for not 'bemembering,' they
choked. If Punch sprawled on the sofa in the Southamp-
ton lodging-house and sketched his future in purple and
gold, they choked ; and so they did if Judy put her mouth
for a kiss.

Through many days all four were vagabonds on the
face of the earth — Punch with no one to give orders to,

BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP

Judy too young for anything, and Papa and Mamma
grave, distracted, and choking.

'Where,' demanded Punch, wearied of a loathsome
contrivance on four wheels with a mound of luggage atop
— 'where is our broom-gharri ? This thing talks so much
that / can't talk. Where is our own broom-gharri ? When
I was at Bandstand before we corned away, I asked Inver-
arity Sahib why he was sitting in it; and he said it was his
own. And I said, "I will give it you" — I like Inverarity
Sahib — and I said, "Can you put your legs through the
pully-wag loops by the windows?" And Inverarity
Sahib said No, and laughed. / can put my legs through
the pully-wag loops. I can put my legs through these
pully-wag loops. Look! Oh, Mamma's crying again!
I didn't know I wasn't not to do so.'

Punch drew his legs out of the loops of the fourwheeler:
the door opened and he slid to the earth, in a cascade of
parcels, at the door of an austere little villa whose gates
bore the legend ' Downe Lodge.' Punch gathered himself
together and eyed the house with disfavour. It stood on
a sandy road, and a cold wind tickled his knickerbock-
ered legs.

' Let us go away,' said Punch. ' This isnot a pretty place.'

But Mamma and Papa and Judy had left the cab, and
all the luggage was being taken into the house. At the
doorstep stood a woman in black, and she smiled largely,
with dry chapped lips. Behind her was a man, big, bony,
gray, ancflame as to one leg behind him a boy oi twelve,
black-haiTcd and oily in appearance. Punch surveyed
the trio, and advanced without fear, as he had been ac-
customed to clo in Bombay when callers came and he
happened to be playing in (he veranda.

'How clo you do?' said he. 1 1 am Punch.' Hut they
were all looking at the luggage all except the gray man,

246

UNDER THE DEODARS

who shook hands with Punch, and said he was 'a smart
little fellow.' There was much running about and bang-
ing of boxes, and Punch curled himself up on the sofa in
the dining-room and considered things.

'I don't like these people,' said Punch. 'But never
mind. We'll go away soon. We have always went away
soon from everywhere. I wish we was gone back to Bom-
bay soon.1

The wish bore no fruit. For six days Mamma wept
at intervals, and showed the woman in black all
Punch's clothes — a liberty which Punch resented. ' But
p'raps she's a new white ayah' he thought. 'I'm to call
her Antirosa, but she doesn't call me Sahib. She
says just Punch,' he confided to Judy. 'What is
Antirosa? '

Judy didn't know. Neither she nor Punch had heard
anything of an animal called an aunt. Their world had
been Papa and Mamma, who knew everything, per-
mitted everything, and loved everybody — even Punch
when he used to go into the garden at Bombay and fill his
nails with mould after the weekly nail-cutting, because,
as he explained between two strokes of the slipper to
his sorely tried Father, his fingers 'felt so new at the
ends.'

In an undefined way Punch judged it advisable to keep
both parents between himself and the woman in black and
the boy in black hair. He did not approve of them. He
liked the gray man, who had expressed a wish to be
called 'Uncleharri.' They nodded at each other when
they met, and the gray man showed him a little ship with
rigging that took up and down.

'She is the model of the Brisk — the little Brisk that
was sore exposed that day at Navarino.' The gray man
hummed the last words and fell into a reverie. 'I'll teli

BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 247

you about Navarino, Punch, when we go for walks to-
gether; and you mustn't touch the ship, because she's the
Brisk.'

Long before that walk, the first of many, was taken,
they roused Punch and Judy in the chill dawn of a
February morning to say Good-bye; and of all people
in the wide earth to Papa and Mamma — both cry-
ing this time. Punch was very sleepy and Judy was
cross.

'Don't forget us,' pleaded Mamma. 'Oh, my little
son, don't forget us, and see that Judy remembers
too.'

'I've told Judy to bemember,' said Punch, wriggling,
for his father's beard tickled his neck. ' I've told Judy —
ten — forty — 'leven thousand times. But Ju's so young
— quite a baby — isn't she? '

'Yes/ said Papa, 'quite a baby, and you must be good
to Judy, and make haste to learn to write and — and —
and '

Punch was back in his bed again. Judy was fast asleep,
and there was therattleof acab below. Papa and Mamma
had gone away. Not to Nassick ; that was across the sea .
To some place much nearer, of course, and equally of
course they would return. They came back after dinner-
parties, and Papa had come back after he had been to a
place called "The Snows,' and Mamma with him, to Punch
and Judy'at Mrs. Inverarity's house in Marine Lines.
Assuredly "they would come back again. So Punch fell
asleep till the true morning, when the black-haired boy
met him with the information that Papa and Mamma had
gone to Bombay, and that he and Judy were to stay at
Downe Lodge ' for ever.' Antirosa, tearfully appealed to
for a contradiction, said thai Harry had spoken the truth,
and that it behooved Punch to fold jp his clothes neatly

'.V*

248

UNDER THE DEODARS

on going to bed. Punch went out and wept bitterly with
Judy, into whose fair head he had driven some ideas of the
meaning of separation.

When a matured man discovers that he has been
deserted by Providence, deprived of his God, and cast,
without help, comfort, or sympathy, upon a world which
is new and strange to him, his despair, which may find
expression in evil-living, the writing of his experiences, or
the more satisfactory diversion of suicide, is generally
supposed to be impressive. A child, under exactly simi-
lar circumstances as far as its knowledge goes, cannot
very well curse God and die. It howls till its nose is red,
its eyes are sore, and its head aches. Punch and Judy,
through no fault of their own, had lost all their world.
They sat in the hall and cried; the black-haired boy look-
ing on from afar.

The model of the ship availed nothing, though the gray
man assured Punch that he might pull the rigging up and
down as much as he pleased ; and Judy was promised free
entry into the kitchen. They wanted Papa and Mamma
gone to Bombay beyond the seas, and their grief while it
lasted was without remedy.

When the tears ceased the house was very still. Anti-
rosa had decided that it was better to let the children
'have their cry out,' and the boy had gone to school.
Punch raised his head from the floor and sniffed mourn-
fully. Judy was nearly asleep. Three short years had
not taught her how to bear sorrow with full knowledge.
There was a distant, dull boom in the air — a repeated
heavy thud. Punch knew that sound in Bombay in the
Monsoon. It was the sea — the sea that must be trav-
ersed before any one could get to Bombay.

'Quick, Jul' he cried, 'we're close to the sea. I can
hear it! Listen! That's where they've went. P'raps

BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP

we can catch them if we was in time. They didn't mean
to go without us. They've only forgot.'

'Iss,' said Judy. 'They've only forgotted. Less go
to the sea.'

The hall-door was open and so was the garden-gate.

Tt's very, very big, this place,' he said, looking cau-
tiously down the road, 'and we will get lost; but / will
find a man and order him to take me back to my house
— like I did in Bombay.'

He took Judy by the hand, and the two ran hatless
in the direction of the sound of the sea. Downe Villa
was almost the last of a range of newly-built houses
running out, through a field of brick-mounds, to a heath
where gypsies occasionally camped and where the Gar-
rison Artillery of Rocklington' practised. There were
few people to be seen, and the children might have been
taken for those of the soldiery who ranged far. Half
an hour the wearied little legs tramped across heath,
potato-patch, and sand-dune.

'I'se so tired,' said Judy, 'and Mamma will be
angry.'

'Mamma's never angry. I suppose she is waiting at
the sea now while Papa gets tickets. We'll find them
and go along with. Ju, you mustn't sit down. Only
a little more and we'll come to the sea. Ju, if you sit
down I'll Ihmack you!' said Punch.

They climbed another dune, and came upon (he great
gray sea at low tide. Hundreds of c rabs were sent t ling
about the beach, but there was no trace ol" Papa and
Mamma, not even of a ship upon the waters nothing
but sand and mud for miles and miles.

And 'Uneleharri' found them by ehancc very
muddy and very forlorn Punch dissolved in tears,
but trying to divert Judy with an ' iekle trab,' and Judy

UNDER THE DEODARS

wailing to the pitiless horizon for 'Mamma, Mamma!' —
and again 'Mamma!'

The Second Bag

Ah, well-a-day, for we are souls bereaved!
Of all the creatures under Heaven's wide scope
We are most hopeless, who had once most hope,
And most beliefless, who had most believed.

The City of Dreadful Night.

\ll this time not a word about Black Sheep. He
came later, and Harry the black-haired boy was mainly
responsible for his coming.

Judy — who could help loving little Judy? — passed,
by special permit, into the kitchen and thence straight
to Aunty Rosa's heart. Harry was Aunty Rosa's one
child, and Punch was the extra boy about the house.
There was no special place for him or his little affairs,
and he was forbidden to sprawl on sofas and explain his
ideas about the manufacture of this world and his hopes
for his future. Sprawling was lazy and wore out sofas,
and little boys were not expected to talk. They were
talked to, and the talking to was intended for the bene-
fit of their morals. As the unquestioned despot of the
house at Bombay, Punch could not quite understand
how he came to be of no account in this his new life.

Harry might reach across the table and take what he
wanted; Judy might point and get what she wanted.
Punch was forbidden to do either. The gray man was-
his great hope and stand-by for many months after
Mamma and Papa left, and he had forgotten to tell
Judy to 'bemember Mamma.'

This lapse was excusable, because in the interval
he had been introduced by Aunty Rosa to two very

BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP

jmpressive things — an abstraction called God, the inti-
mate friend and ally of Aunty Rosa, generally believed
to live behind the kitchen-range because it was hot
there — and a dirty brown book filled with unintelli-
gible dots and marks. Punch was always anxious to
oblige everybody. He therefore welded the story of
the Creation on to what he could recollect of his Indian
fairy tales, and scandalised Aunty Rosa by repeating
the result to Judy. It was a sin, a grievous sin, and
Punch was talked to for a quarter of an hour. He
could not understand where the iniquity came in, but
was careful not to repeat the offence, because Aunty
Rosa told him that God had heard every word he had
said and was very angry. If this were true, why didn't
God come and say so, thought Punch, and dismissed
the matter from his mind. Afterwards he learned to
know the Lord as the only thing in the world more awful
than Aunty Rosa — as a Creature that stood in the back
ground and counted the strokes of the cane.

But the reading was, just then, a much more serious
matter than any creed. Aunty Rosa sat him upon a
table and told him that A B meant ab.

'Why?' said Punch. 'A is a and B is bee. Whs
does A B mean ab?'

'Because I tell you it does,' said Aunty Rosa, 'and
you've got to say it.'

Punch* said it accordingly, and for a month, hugely
against his will, stumbled through the brown book, not
in the least comprehending what it meant. Hut Uncle
Harry, who walked much and generally alone, was wont
to come into the nursery and suggest to Aunty Rosa
that Punch should walk with him. He seldom spoke,
but he showed Punch all Rocklington, from the mud-
banks and the sand of the back-bay to th»c great har-

UNDER THE DEODARS

bours whtre ships lay at anchor, and the dockyards
where the hammers were never still, and the marine-
store shops, and the shiny brass counters in the Offices
where Uncle Harry went once every three months with a
slip of blue paper and received sovereigns in exchange;
for he held a wound-pension. Punch heard, too, from
his lips the story of the battle of Navarino, where the
sailors of the Fleet, for three days afterwards, were deaf
as posts and could only sign to each other. 'That was
because of the noise of the guns,' said Uncle Harry,
'and I have got the wadding of a bullet somewhere
inside me now.'

Punch regarded him with curiosity. He had not the
least idea what wadding was, and his notion of a bullet
was a dockyard cannon-ball bigger than his own head.
How could Uncle Harry keep a cannon-ball inside him?
He was ashamed to ask, for fear Uncle Harry might be
angry.

Punch had never known what anger — real anger-
meant until one terrible day when Harry had taken
his paint-box to paint a boat with, and Punch had pro-
tested. Then Uncle Harry had appeared on the scene
and, muttering something about 'strangers' children,'
had with a stick smitten the black-haired boy across
the shoulders till he wept and yelled, and Aunty Rosa
came in and abused Uncle Harry for cruelty to his own
flesh and blood, and Punch shuddered to the tips of his
shoes. 'It wasn't my fault,' he explained to the boy,
but both Harry and Aunty Rosa said that it was, and
that Punch had told tales, and for a week there were no
more walks with Uncle Harry.

But that week brought a great joy to Punch.

He had repeated till he was thrice weary the state-
ment that ' the Cat lay on the Mat and the Rat came in/

BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP

255

'Now I can truly read,' said Punch, 'and now I will
never read anything in the world.'

He put the brown book in the cupboard where his
ochool-books lived and accidentally tumbled out a
venerable volume, without covers, labelled Sharpe's
Magazine. There was the most portentous picture of a
griffin on the first page, with verses below. The griffin
carried off one sheep a day from a German village, till
a man came with a 'falchion' and split the griffin open.
Goodness only knew what a falchion was, but there was
the Griffin, and his history was an improvement upon the
eternal Cat.

'This,' said Punch, 'means things, and now I will
know all about everything in all the world.' He read
till the light failed, not understanding a tithe of the
meaning, but tantalised by glimpses of new worlds here-
after to be revealed.

'What is a "falchion"? What is a "e-wee lamb"?
What is a "base wssurper"? What is a "verdant me-
ad"?' he demanded with flushed cheeks, at bedtime, of
the astonished Aunty Rosa.

'Say your prayers and go to sleep,' she replied, and
that was all the help Punch then or afterwards found
at her hands in the new and delightful exercise of reading.

'Aunty Rosa only knows about God and tilings like
that,' argued Punch. 'Uncle Harry will tell me.'

The next walk proved that Uncle Harry could not
helj) cither; but he allowed Punch to talk, and even
sat down on a bench to hear about the Griffin. Other
walks brought other stories as Punch ranged further
afield, for the house held large store of old books that
no one ever opened from Frank Fairlegh in serial
numbers, and the earlier poems of Tennyson, con-
tributed anonymously to Sharpens Magazine, to '62 Exhi-

254

UNDER THE DEODARS

bition Catalogues, gay with colours and delightfully in-
comprehensible, and odd leaves of Gulliver's Travels.

As soon as Punch could string a few pot-hooks to-
gether, he wrote to Bombay, demanding by return of
post 4 all the books in all the world.' Papa could not
comply with this modest indent, but sent Grimm's Fairy
Tales and a Hans Andersen. That was enough. If he
were only left alone Punch could pass, at any hour he
chose, into a land of his own, beyond reach of Aunty
Rosa and her God, Harry and his teasements, and
Judy's claims to be played with.

'Don't disturve me, I'm reading. Go and play in
the kitchen,' grunted Punch. 'Aunty Rosa lets you go
there.' Judy was cutting her second teeth and was
fretful. She appealed to Aunty Rosa, who descended
on Punch.

'I was reading,' he explained, 'reading a book. I
want to read.'

'You're only doing that to show off,' said Aunty
Rosa. 'But we'll see. Play with Judy now, and don't
open a book for a week.'

Judy did not pass a very enjoyable playtime with
Punch, who was consumed with indignation. There
was a pettiness at the bottom of the prohibition which
puzzled him.

'It's what I like to do,' he said, 'and she's found
out that and stopped me. Don't cry, Ju — it wasn't
your fault — please don't cry, or she'll say I made you.'

Ju loyally mopped up her tears, and the two played
in their nursery, a room in the basement and half under-
ground, to which they were regularly sent after the mid-
day dinner while Aunty Rosa slept. She drank wine
— that is to say, something from a bottle in the cellaret —
for her stomach's sake, but if she did not fall asleep she

BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP

*S5

would sometimes come into the nursery to see that the
children were really playing. Now bricks, wooden hoops,
ninepins, and chinaware cannot amuse for ever, especially
when all Fairyland is to be won by the mere opening of
a book, and, as often as not, Punch would be discovered
reading to Judy or telling her interminable tales. That
was an offence in the eyes of the law, and Judy would be
whisked off by Aunty Rosa, while Punch was left to play
alone, 'and be sure that I hear you doing it.'

It was not a cheering employ, for he had to make a
playful noise. At last, with infinite craft, he devised
an arrangement whereby the table could be supported
as to three legs on toy bricks, leaving the fourth clear
to bring down on the floor. He would work the table
with one hand and hold a book with the other. This
he did till an evil day when Aunty Rosa pounced upon
him unawares and told him that he was 'acting a lie.'

'If you're old enough to do that,' she said — her tem-
per was always worst after dinner---' you're old enough
to be beaten.'

'But — I'm — I'm not a animal!' said Punch aghast.
He remembered Uncle Harry and the stick, and turned
white. Aunty Rosa had hidden a light cane behind
her, and Punch was beaten then and there over the
shoulders. It was a revelation to him. The room door
was shut, and he was left to weep himself into repent-
ance and work out his own gospel of life.

Aunty Rosa, he argued, had the power to beat him with
many stripes. It was unjust and cruel, and Mamma and
Papa would never have allowed it. Unless perhaps, as
Aunty Rosa seemed to imply, they had sent sec ret orders.
In which case he was abandoned indeed. It would In-
discreet in the future lo propitiate Aunty kosa, but , then,
again, even in matters in which he was innocent, he had

5fc

UNDER THE DEODARS

been accused of wishing to ' show off.' He had ' shown of?
before visitors when he had attacked a strange gentleman
— Harry's uncle, not his own — with requests for infor-
mation about the Griffin and the falchion, and the precise
nature of the Tilbury in which Frank Fairlegh rode — all
points of paramount interest which he was bursting to
understand. Clearly it would not do to pretend to care
for Aunty Rosa.

At this point Harry entered and stood afar off, eying
Punch, a dishevelled heap in the corner of the room, with
disgust.

'You're a liar — a young liar,' said Harry, with great
unction, ' and you're to have tea down here because you're
not fit to speak to us. And you're not to speak to Judy
again till Mother gives you leave. You'll corrupt her.
You're only fit to associate with the servant. Mother
says so.'

Having reduced Punch to a second agony of tears,
Harry departed upstairs with the news that Punch was
still rebellious.

Uncle Harry sat uneasily in the dining-room. 'Damn
it all, Rosa,' said he at last, 'can't you leave the child
alone? He's a good enough little chap when I meet
him.'

'He puts on his best manners with you, Henry,' said
Aunty Rosa, 'but I'm afraid, I'm very much afraid, that
he is the Black Sheep of the family.'

Harry heard and stored up the name for future use.
Judy cried till she was bidden to stop, her brother not
being worth tears; and the evening concluded with the re-
turn of Punch to the upper regions and a private sitting at
which all the blinding horrors of Hell were revealed to
Punch with such store of imagery as Aunty Rosa's narrow
mind possessed.

BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 257

Most previous of all was Judy's round-eyed reproach,
and Punch went to bed in the depths of the Valley of Hu-
miliation. He shared his room with Harry and knew the
torture in store. For an hour and a half he had to answer
that young gentleman's question as to his motives for
telling a lie, and a grievous lie, the precise quantity of
punishment inflicted by Aunty Rosa, and had also to pro-
fess his deep gratitude for such religious instruction as
Harry thought fit to impart.

From that day began the downfall of Punch, now Black
Sheep.

' Untrustworthy in one thing, untrustworthy in all,"
said Aunty Rosa, and Harry felt that Black Sheep was
delivered into his hands. He would wake him up in the
night to ask him why he was such a liar.

' I don't know,' Punch would reply.

'Then don't you think you ought to get up and pray to
God for a new heart? '

'Y-yess.'

* Get out and pray, then ! ' And Punch would get out of
bed with raging hate in his heart against all the world,
seen and unseen. He was always tumbling into trouble.
Harry had a knack of cross-examining him as to his day's
doings, which seldom failed to lead him, sleepy and savage,
into half a dozen contradictions — all duly reported to
Aunty Rosa next morning.

'But it wasn't a lie,' Punch would begin, charging into
a laboured explanation that landed him more hopelessly
in the mire. 'I said that I didn't say my prayers twice
over in the day, and that was on Tuesday. Once I did. L
know I did, but Harry said I didn't / and so forth, till the
tension brought tears, and he was dismissed from the table
in disgrace.

'You usen't to be as bad as this,' said Judy, awestricken

258 . UNDER THE DEODARS

at the catalogue of Black Sheep's crimes. 'Why are you
so bad now? '

'I don't know,' Black Sheep would reply. 'I'm not, if
I only wasn't bothered upside down. I knew what I did,
and I want to say so; but Harry always makes it out
different somehow, and Aunty Rosa doesn't believe a
word I say . Oh , Ju ! don ' t you say I 'm bad too . '

'Aunty Rosa says you are,' said Judy. 'She told the
Vicar so when he came yesterday.'

'Why does she tell all the people outside the house
about me? It isn't fair,' said Black Sheep. ' When I was
in Bombay, and was bad — doing bad, not made-up bad
like this — Mamma told Papa, and Papa told me he knew,
and that was all. Outside people didn't know too — even
Meeta didn't know.'

'I don't remember,' said Judy wistfully. 'I was. all
kittle then. Mamma was just as fond of you as she was of
me, wasn't she?'

' 'Course she was. So was Papa. So was everybody.'

'Aunty Rosa likes me more than she does you. She
says that you are a Trial and a Black Sheep, and I'm not
to speak to you more than I can help.'

'Always? Not outside of the times when you mustn't
speak to me at all? '

Judy nodded her head mournfully. Black Sheep
turned away in despair, but Judy's arms were round his
neck.

'Never mind, Punch,' she whispered. 'I will speak to
you just the same as ever and ever. You're my own own
brother though you are — though Aunty Rosa says you're
Bad, and Harry says you're a little coward. He says
that if I pulled your hair hard, you'd cry.'

'Pull, then,' said Punch.

Judy pulled gingerly,

BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP

259

'Pull harder — as hard as you can! There! I don't
mind how much you pull it now. If you'll speak to me
same as ever I'll let you pull it as much as you like — pull it
out if you like. But I know if Harry came and stood by
and made you do it I'd cry.'

So the two children sealed the compact with a kiss, and
Black Sheep's heart was cheered within him, and by ex-
treme caution and careful avoidance of Harry he acquired
virtue, and was allowed to read undisturbed for a week.
Uncle Harry took him for walks, and consoled him with
rough tenderness, never calling him Black Sheep. 'It's
good for you, I suppose, Punch,' he used to say. 'Let us
sit down. I'm getting tired.' His steps led him now not
to the beach, but to the Cemetery of Rocklington, amid
the potato-fields. For hours the gray man would sit on a
tombstone, while Black Sheep read epitaphs, and then
with a sigh would stump home again.

'I shall lie there soon,' said he to Black Sheep, one
winter evening, when his face showed white as a worn
silver coin under the light of the lych-gate. ' You needn't
tell Aunty Rosa.'

A month later, he turned sharp round, ere half
a morning walk was completed, and stumped back
to the house. 'Put me to bed, Rosa,' he muttered.
'I've walked my last. The wadding has found me
jut.'

Theyput him to bed, and for a fortnight the shadow of
his sickness lay upon the house, and Black Slurp went to
and fro unobserved. Papa had sent him some new books,
and he was told to keep quiet. lie retired into his own
world, and was perfectly happy. Kvcn at night his
felicity was unbroken. lie could lie in bed and string
himself tales of travel and adventure while Harry was
downstairs.

26o

UNDER THE DEODARS

4 Uncle Harry's going to die,' said Judy, who now lived
almost entirely with Aunty Rosa.

'I'm very sorry,' said Black Sheep soberly. 'He told
me that a long time ago.'-

Aunty Rosa heard the conversation. 'Will nothing
check your wicked tongue? ' she said angrily. There were
blue circles round her eyes.

Black Sheep retreated to the nursery and read Cometh
up as a Flower with deep and uncomprehending interest.
He had been forbidden to open it on account of its ' sinful-
ness,' but the bonds of the Universe were crumbling, and
Aunty Rosa was in great grief.

'I'm glad,' said Black Sheep. 'She's unhappy now.
It wasn't a lie, though. / knew. He told me not to tell.'

That night Black Sheep woke with a start. Harry was
not in the room, and there was a sound of sobbing on the
next floor. Then the voice of Uncle Harry, singing the
song of the Battle of Navarino, came through the dark-
ness:—

'Our vanship was the Asia —
The Albion and Genoa!'

'He's getting well,' thought Black Sheep, who knew
the song through all its seventeen verses. But the blood
froze at his little heart as he thought. The voice leapt an
octave, and rang shrill as a boatswain's pipe: —

'And next came on the lovely Rose,
The Philomel, her fire-ship, closed,
And the little Brisk was sore exposed
That day at Navarino.'

'That day at Navarino, Uncle Harry!' shouted Black
Sheep, half wild with excitement and fear of he knew not
tyhat.

BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP

261

A door opened, and Aunty Rosa screamed up the stair-
case: 'Hush! For God's sake hush, you little devil
Uncle Harry is dead I '

The Third Bag

Journeys end in lovers' meeting,
Every wise man's son doth know.

'I wonder what will happen to me now/ thought Black
Sheep, when semi-pagan rites peculiar to the burial of
the Dead in middle-class houses had been accomplished,
and Aunty Rosa, awful in black crape, had returned to
this life. ' I don't think I've done anything bad that she
knows of. I suppose I will soon. She will be very cross
after Uncle Harry's dying, and Harry will be cross
too. I'll keep in the nursery.'

Unfortunately for Punch's plans, it was decided that he
should be sent to a day-school which Harry attended.
This meant a morning walk with Harry, and perhaps an
evening one; but the prospect of freedom in the interval
was refreshing. 'Harry'll tell everything I do, but I
won't do anything,' said Black Sheep. Fortified with
this virtuous resolution, he went to school only to find that
Harry's version of his character had preceded him, and
that life was a burden in consequence. He took stock of
his associates. Some of them were unclean, some of them
talked in dialect, many dropped their h's, and there were
two Jews and a negro, or some one quite as dark, in the
assembly. 'That's a hubslii,'' said Black Sheep to him-
self. 'Bven Meeta used to laugh at a hubshi. I don't
think this is a proper place.1 He was indignant for at least
an hour, till he reflected that any expostulation on his part
would be by Aunty Rosa construed into ' showing off,' and
thai I tarry would tell the boys.

262 UNDER THE DEODARS

'How do you like school?' said Aunty Rosa at the end
of the day.

'I think it is a very nice place,' said Punch quietly.

'I suppose you warned the boys of Black Sheep's char-
acter? ' said Aunty Rosa to Harry.

'Oh yes,' said the censor of Black Sheep's morals.
'They know all about him.'

'If I was with my father/ said Black Sheep, stung to
the quick, ' I shouldn't speak to those boys. He wouldn't
let me. They live in shops. I saw them go into shops
— where their fathers live and sell things.'

'You're too good for that school, are you?' said
Aunty Rosa, with a bitter smile. 'You ought to be
grateful, Black Sheep, that those boys speak to you at
all. It isn't every school that takes little liars.'

Harry did not fail to make much capital out of Black
Sheep's ill-considered remark; with the result that
several boys, including the hubshi, demonstrated to
Black Sheep the eternal equality of the human race by
smacking his head, and his consolation from Aunty
Rosa was that it 'served him right for being vain.'
He learned, however, to keep his opinions to himself,
and by propitiating Harry in carrying books and the
like to get a little peace. His existence was not too
joyful. From nine till twelve he was at school, and
from two to four, except on Saturdays. In the eve-
nings he was sent down into the nursery to prepare his
lessons for the next day, and every night came the
dreaded cross-questionings at Harry's hand. Of Judy
he saw but little. She was deeply religious* — at six
years of age Religion is easy to come by — and sorely
divided between her natural love for Black Sheep and
her love for Aunty Rosa, who could do no wrong.

The lean woman returned that love with interest.

BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP

263

md Judy, when she dared, took advantage of this (or
the remission 01 Black Sheep's penalties. Failures in
lessons at school were punished at home by a week
without reading other than schoolbooks, and Harry
brought the news of such a failure with glee. Further,
Black Sheep was then bound to repeat his lessons at
bedtime to Harry, who generally succeeded in making
him break down, and consoled him by gloomiest fore-
bodings for the morrow. Harry was at once spy,
practical joker, inquisitor, and Aunty Rosa's deputy
executioner. He filled his many posts to admiration.
From his actions, now that Uncle Harry was dead,
there was no appeal. Black Sheep had not been per-
mitted to keep any self-respect at school: at home he
was of course utterly discredited, and grateful for any
pity that the servant-girls — they changed frequently
at Downe Lodge because they, too, were liars — might
show. 'You're just fit to row in the same boat with
Black Sheep,' was a sentiment that each new Jane or
Eliza might expect to hear, before a month was over,
from Aunty Rosa's lips; and Black Sheep was used to
ask new girls whether they had yet been compared to
him. Harry was 'Master Harry' in their mouths;
Judy was . officially 'Miss Judy'; but Black Sheep was
never anything more than Black Sheep tout court.

As time went on and the memory of Papa and Mamma
became wholly overlaid by the unpleasant task of writ-
ing them'letters, under Aunty Rosa's eye, each Sunday,
Black Sheep forgot what manner of life he had led
in the beginning of things. Even Judy's appeals to
'try and remember about Bombay' [ailed to quicken
him.

'I can't remember,' he said. 'I know I used to give
orders and Mamma kissed me.'

I

264 UNDER THE DEODARS

'Aunty Rosa will kiss you if you are good,' pleaded
Judy.

'Ugh! I don't want to be kissed by Aunty Rosa.
She'd say I was doing it to get something more to eat.'

The weeks lengthened into months, and the holidays
came, but just before the holidays Black Sheep fell into
deadly sin.

Among the many boys whom Harry had incited to
'punch Black Sheep's head because he daren't hit back,'
was one more aggravating than the rest, who, in an un-
lucky moment, fell upon Black Sheep when Harry was
not near. The blows stung, and Black Sheep struck
back at random with all the power at his command.
The boy dropped and whimpered. Black Sheep was
astounded at his own act, but, feeling the unresisting
body under him, shook it with both his hands in blind
fury and then began to throttle his enemy, meaning
honestly to slay him. There was a scuffle, and Black
Sheep was torn off the body by Harry and some col-
leagues, and cuffed home tingling but exultant. Aunty
Rosa was out: pending her arrival, Harry set himself
to lecture Black Sheep on the sin of murder — which he
described as the offence of Cain.

'Why didn't you fight him fair? What did you hit
him when he was down for, you little cur?'

Black Sheep looked up at Harry's throat and then at
a knife on the dinner- table.

'I don't understand,' he said wearily. 'You always
set him on me and told me I was a coward when I
blubbed. Will you leave me alone until Aunty Rosa
comes in? She'll beat me if you tell her I ought to be
beaten; so it's all right.'

'It's all wrong,' said Harry magisterially. 'You
nearly killed him, and I shouldn't wonder if he dies.'

BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP

'Will he die?' said Black Sheep.

1 1 dare say,' said Harry, 'and then you'll be hanged,
and go to Hell.'

'All right,' said Black Sheep, picking up the table-
knife. 'Then I'll kill you now. You say things and
do things and — and / don't know how things happen,
and you never leave me alone — and I don't care what
happens ! '

He ran at the boy with the knife, and Harry fled
upstairs to his room, promising Black Sheep the finest
thrashing in the world when Aunty Rosa returned.
Black Sheep sat at the bottom of the stairs, the table-
knife in his hand, and wept for that he had not killed
Harry. The servant-girl came up from the kitchen,
took the knife away, and consoled him. But Black
Sheep was beyond consolation. He would be badly
beaten by Aunty Rosa; then there would be another
beating at Harry's hands; then Judy would not be
allowed to speak to him; then the tale would be told at
school and then

There was no one to help and no one to care, and
the best way out of the business was by death. A
knife would hurt, but Aunty Rosa had told him, a year
ago, that if he sucked paint he would die. He went
into the nursery, unearthed the now disused Noah's
Ark, and sucked the paint ofT as many animals as re-
mained. *• It tasted abominable, but he had Hiked
Noah's Dove clean by the time Aunty Rosa and Judy
returned.. He went upstairs and greeted them with:
'Please, Aunty Rosa, I believe I've nearly killed a boy
at school, and I've tried to kill Harry, and when you've
done all about God and Hell, will you beat me and get
it over?'

The tale of the assault as told by Harry could only be

166

UNDER THE DEODARS

explained on the ground of possession by the Devil.
Wherefore Black Sheep was not only most excellently
beaten, once by Aunty Rosa and once, when thoroughly
cowed down, by Harry, but he was further prayed for
at family prayers, together with Jane who had stolen a
cold rissole from the pantry and snuffled audibly as
her sin was brought before the Throne of Grace. Black
Sheep was sore and stiff but triumphant. He would
die that very night and be rid of them all. No, he
would ask for no forgiveness from Harry, and at bed-
time would stand no questioning at Harry's hands,
even though addressed as ' Young Cain.'

'I've been beaten,' said he, 'and I've done other
things. I don't care what I do. If you speak to me
to-night, Harry, I'll get out and try to kill you. Now
you can kill me if you like.'

Harry took his bed into the spare room, and Black
Sheep lay down to die.

It may be that the makers of Noah's Arks know that
their animals are likely to find their way into young
mouths, and paint them accordingly. Certain it is
that the common, weary next morning broke through
the windows and found Black Sheep quite well and a
good cjeal ashamed of himself, but richer by the knowl-
edge that he could, in extremity, secure himself against
Harry for the future.

When he descended to breakfast on the first day of
the holidays, he was greeted with the news that Harry,
Aunty Rosa, and Judy were going away to Brighton,
while Black Sheep was to stay in the house with the
servant. His latest outbreak suited Aunty Rosa's
plans admirably. It gave her good excuse for leaving
the extra boy behind. Papa in Bombay, who really
seemed to know a young sinner's wants to the hour.

BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP

267

sent, that week, a package of new books. And with
these, and the society of Jane on board-wages, Black
Sheep was left alone for a month.

The books lasted for ten days. They were eaten too
quickly in long gulps of twelve hours at a time. Then
came days of doing absolutely nothing, of dreaming
dreams and marching imaginary armies up and down
stairs, of counting the number of banisters, and of
measuring the length and breadth of every room in
handspans — fifty down the side, thirty across, and
fifty back again. Jane made many friends, and, after
receiving Black Sheep's assurance that he would not
tell of her absences, went out daily for long hours.
Black Sheep would follow the rays of the sinking sun
from the kitchen to the dining-room and thence upward
to his own bedroom until all was gray dark, and he ran
down to the kitchen fire and read by its light. He was
happy in that he was left alone and could read as much
as he pleased. But, later, he grew 'afraid of the shadows
of window-curtains and the flapping of doors and the
creaking of shutters. He went out into the garden,
and the rustling of the laurel-bushes frightened him.

He was glad when they all returned — Aunty Rosa,
Harry, and Judy full of news, and Judy laden with
gifts. Who could help loving loyal little Judy? In
return for all her merry babblement, Black Sheep con-
fided to. her that the distance from the hall-door to the
top of ihe first landing was exactly one hundred and
eighty-four handspans. He had found it out himself.

Then the old life recommenced; but with a differ-
ence, and a new sin. To his other iniquities Black
Sheep had now added a phenomenal clumsiness — was
as unfit to trust in ac tion as he was in word. lie himself
Could not account lor spilling everything he touched,

268

UNDER THE DEODARS

upsetting glasses as he put his hand out, and bumping
his head against doors that were manifestly shut. There
was a gray haze upon all his world, and it narrowed
month by month, until at last it left Black Sheep almost
alone with the napping curtains that were so like ghosts,
and the nameless terrors of broad daylight that were
only coats on pegs after all.

Holidays came and holidays went and Black Sheep
was taken to see many people whose faces were all
exactly alike; was beaten when occasion demanded,
and tortured by Harry on all possible occasions; but
defended by Judy through good and evil report, though
she hereby drew upon herself the wrath of Aunty Rosa.

The weeks were interminable, and Papa and Mamma
were clean forgotten. Harry had left school and was
a clerk in a Banking-Office. Freed from his presence,
Black Sheep resolved that he should no longer be de-
prived of his allowance of pleasure-reading. Conse-
quently when he failed at school he reported that all
was well, and conceived a large contempt for Aunty
Rosa as he saw how easy it was to deceive her. 'She
says I'm a little liar when I don't tell lies, and now I
do, she doesn't know,' thought Black Sheep. Aunty
Rosa had credited him in the past with petty cun-
ning and stratagem that had never entered into his
head. By the light of the sordid knowledge that she
had revealed to him he paid her back full tale. In
a household where the most innocent of his motives,
his natural yearning for a little affection, had been
interpreted into a desire for more bread and jam or
to ingratiate himself with strangers and so put Harry
into the background, his work was easy. Aunty Rosa
£ould penetrate certain kinds of hypocrisy, but not all.
He set his child's wits against hers and was no more

BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP

269

beaten. It grew monthly more and more of a trouble
to read the schoolbooks, and even the pages of the
open-print story-books danced and were dim. So Black
Sheep brooded in the shadows that fell about him and
cut him off from the world, inventing horrible punish-
ments for ' dear Harry, ' or plotting another line of the
tangled web of deception that he wrapped round Aunty
Rosa.

Then the crash came and the cobwebs were broken.
It was impossible to foresee everything. Aunty Rosa
made personal enquiries as to Black Sheep's progress and
received information that startled her. Step by step,
with a delight as keen as when she convicted an underfed
housemaid of the theft of cold meats, she followed the
trail of Black Sheep's delinquencies. For weeks and
weeks, in order to escape banishment from the book-
shelves, he had made a fool of Aunty Rosa, of Harry, of
God, of all the world ! Horrible, most horrible, and evi-
dence of an utterly depraved mind.

Black Sheep counted the cost. 'It will only be one
big beating and then she'll put a card with " Liar" on my
back, same as she did before. Harry will whack me and
pray for me, and she will pray for me at prayers and tell
me I'm a Child of the Devil and give me hymns to learn.
But I've done all my reading and she never knew. She'll
say she knew all along. She's an old liar too,' said
he. '

For three days Black Sheep was shut in his own bed-
room— to prepare his heart. 'That means two beatings
One at school and one here. That one will hurt most.'
And it fell even as he thought. He was thrashed at
school before the Jews and the liubshi, for the heinous
crime of bringing home false reports of progress. He
was thrashed at home by Aunty Rosa on the same count,

270

UNDER THE DEODARS

and then the placard was produced. Aunty Rosa stitched
it between his shoulders and bade him go for a walk with
it upon him.

'If you make me do that/ said Black Sheep very
quietly, 1 1 shall burn this house down, and perhaps I'll kill
you. I don't know whether I can kill you — you're so
bony— but I'll try.'

No punishment followed this blasphemy, though Black
Sheep held himself ready to work his way to Aunty Rosa's
withered throat, and grip there till he was beaten off.
Perhaps Aunty Rosa was afraid, for Black Sheep, having
reached the Nadir of Sin, bore himself with a new reckless-
ness.

In the midst of all the trouble there came a visitor from
over the seas to Downe Lodge, who knew Papa and
Mamma, and was commissioned to see Punch and Judy.
Black Sheep was sent to the drawing-room and charged
into a solid tea-table laden with china.

'Gently, gently, little man,' said the visitor, turning
Black Sheep's face to the light slowly. 'What's that big
bird on the palings? '

' What bird? ' asked Black Sheep.

The visitor looked deep down into Black Sheep's eyes
for half a minute, and then said suddenly: ' Good God, the
little chap's nearly blind ! '

It was a most business-like visitor. He gave orders, on
his own responsibility, that Black Sheep was not to go to
school or open a book until Mamma came home. ' She'll
be here in three weeks, as you know of course,' said he,
' and I'm Inverarity Sahib. I ushered you into this wicked
world, young man, and a nice use you seem to have made
of your time. You must do nothing whatever. Can you
do that?'

' Yes/ said Punch in a dazed way. He had known that

BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP

Mamma was coming. There was a chance, then, of an-
other beating. Thank Heaven, Papa wasn't coming too.
Aunty Rosa had said of late that he ought to be beaten by
a man.

For the next three weeks Black Sheep was strictly
allowed to do nothing. He spent his time in the old
nursery looking at the broken toys, for all of which account
must be rendered to Mamma. Aunty Rosa hit him over
the hands if even a wooden boat were broken. But that
sin was of small importance compared to the other reve-
lations, so darkly hinted at by Aunty Rosa.

'When your Mother comes, and hears what I have to
tell her, she may appreciate you properly,' she said grimly,
hK& mounted guard over Judy lest that small maiden
should attempt to comfort her brother, to the peril of her
soul.

And Mamma came — in a four-wheeler — fluttered with
tender excitement. Such a Mamma! She was young,
frivolously young, and beautiful, with delicately flushed
cheeks, eyes that shone like stars, and a voice that needed
no appeal of outstretched arms to draw little ones to her
heart. Judy ran straight to her, but Black Sheep hesi-
tated. Could this wonder be 'showing off? She would
not put out her arms when she knew of his crimes. Mean-
time was it possible that by fondling she wanted to get
anything out of Black Sheep? Only all his love and all his
confidence; but that Black Sheep did not know. Aunty
Rosa withdrew and left Mamma, kneeling between her
children, half laughing, half crying, in the very hall
where Punc h and Judy had wept five years before,

'Well, chicks, do you remember ine?'

'No,' said Judy frankly, 'but I said, "God bless Pap*
and Mamma," ev'vy night.'

'A little,' said Black Sheep. 'Remember I wrote to yot.

272

UNDER THE DEODARS

every week, anyhow. That isn't to show off, but 'cause
of what comes afterwards.'

'What comes after? What should come after, my
darling boy? ' And she drew him to her again. He came
awkwardly, with many angles. 'Not used to petting,'
said the quick Mother-soul. ' The girl is.'

'She's too little to hurt any one,' thought Black Sheep,
' and if I said I'd kill her, she'd be afraid. I wonder what
Aunty Rosa will tell.'

There was a constrained late dinner, at the end of which
Mamma picked up Judy and put her to bed with endear-
ments manifold. Faithless little Judy had shown her de-
fection from Aunty Rosa already. And that lady resented
it bitterly. Black Sheep rose to leave the room.

'Come and say good-night/ said Aunty Rosa, offering
a withered cheek.

'Huh!' said Black Sheep. 'I never kiss you, and I'm
not going to show off. Tell that woman what I've done,
and see what she says.'

Black Sheep climbed into bed feeling that he had lost
Heaven after a glimpse through the gates. In half an
hour 'that woman' was bending over him. Black Sheep
flung up his right arm. It wasn't fair to come and hit
him in the dark. Even Aunty Rosa never tried that. But
no blow followed.

'Are you showing off? I won't tell you anything more
than Aunty Rosa has, and she doesn't know everything,'
said Black Sheep as clearly as he could for the arms round
his neck.

'Oh, my son — my little, little son! It was my fault —
my fault, darling — and yet how could we help it? For-
give me, Punch.' The voice died out in a broken whisper,
and two hot tears fell on Black Sheep's forehead.

'Has she been making you cry too?' he asked. 'You

BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP 273

should see Jane cry. But you're nice, and Jane is a Born
Liar — Aunty Rosa says so.'

'Hush, Punch, hush! Myboy, don't talk like that. Try
to love me a little bit — a little bit. You don't know how
I want it. ~P\mch-baba, come back to me! I am your
Mother — your own Mother — and never mind the rest. I
know — yes, Iknow, dear. It doesn't matter now. Punch,
won't you care for me a little? '

It is astonishing how much petting a big boy of ten can
endure when he is quite sure that there is no one to laugh
at him. Black Sheep had never been made much of be-
fore, and here was this beautiful woman treating him —
Black Sheep, the Child of the Devil and the inheritor of
undying flame — as though he were a small God.

'I care for you a great deal, Mother dear,' he whispered
at last, 'and I'm glad you've come back; but are you sure
Aunty Rosa told you everything? '

'Everything. What does it matter? But' — the voice
broke with a sob that was also laughter — 'Punch, my
poor, dear, half-blind darling, don't you think it was a
little foolish of you? '

'No. It saved a lickin'.'

Mamma shuddered and slipped away in the darkness to
write a long letter to Papa. Here is an extract : —

. . . Judy is a dear, plump little prig who adores the woman,
and wears with as much gravity as her religious opinions-only eight,
Jack! — a^vencrable horsehair atrocity, which she calls her Bustle! I
have just-burnt it, and the child is asleep in my bed as 1 write. She
will come to me at once. Punch I cannot quite understand, lie is
well nourished, but seems to have been worried into a system of small
deceptions which the woman magnifies into deadly sins. Don't you
recollect our own upbringing, dear, when the Fear of the Lord was so
often the beginning of falsehood? I shall win Punch to me before long.
I am taking the children away into the country to get them to know me,
and, on the whole, I am content, or shall be when you come home, dear
boy, and then, thank God, we shall be all under one roof again at last!

274

UNDER THE DEODARS

Three months later, Punch, no longer Black Sheep, has
discovered that he is the veritable owner of a real, live,
lovely Mamma, who is also a sister, comforter, and friend,
and that he must protect her till the Father comes home.
Deception does not suit the part of a protector, and, when
one can do anything without question, where is the use of
deception?

'Mother would be awfully cross if you walked through
that ditch,' says Judy, continuing a conversation.

' Mother's never angry,' says Punch. 'She'd just say,
v You're a little pagal;" and that's not nice, but I'll
show.'

Punch walks through the ditch and mires himself to the
knees. 'Mother, dear,' he shouts, 'I'm just as dirty as I
can pos-sib-ly be ! '

' Then change your clothes as quickly as you pos-^'6-ly
can!' Mother's clear voice rings out from the house.
'And don't be a little pagal ! '

'There! 'Told you so,' says Punch. 'It's all different
now, and we are just as much Mother's as if she had never
gone.'

Not altogether, O Punch, for when young lips have
drunk deep of the bitter waters of Hate, Suspicion, and
Despair, all the Love in the world will not wholly take
away that knowledge; though it may turn darkened eyes
for a while to the light, and teach Faith where no Faith
was.

HIS MAJESTY THE KING

Where the word of a King is, there is power: And who may say
mto him — What doest thou?

'Yeth! And Chimo to sleep at ve foot of ve bed, and
ve pink pikky-book, and ve bwead — 'cause I will be
hungwy in ve night — and vat's all, Miss Biddums. And
now give me one kiss and I'll go to sleep. — So! Kite
quiet. Ow! Ve pink pikky-book has slidded under ve
pillow and ve bwead is cwumbling ! Miss Biddums ! Miss
Bid-dums ! I'm so uncomfy ! Come and tuck me up, Miss
Biddums.'

His Majesty the King was going to bed; and poo*,
Datient Miss Biddums, who had advertised herself humbly
as a 'young person, European, accustomed to the care of
,;ttle children,' was forced to wait upon his royal caprices.
The going to bed was always a lengthy process, because
His Majesty had a convenient knack of forgetting which
of his many friends, from the mchter's son to the Com-
missioner's daughter, he had prayed for, and, lest the
Deity should take offence, was used to toil through his
little prayers, in all reverence, five times in one evening.
His Majesty the King believed in the efficacy of prayer as
devoutly as he believed in Chimo, the patient spaniel, or
Miss Biddums, who could reach him down his gun -'with
cursuffun caps — reel ones' — from the upper shelves of
the big nursery cupboard.

At the door of the nursery his authority stopped. Be-
yond lay the empire of his father and mother two very

275

276

UNDER THE DEODARS

terrible people who had no time to waste upon His
Majesty the King. His voice was lowered when he passed
+he frontier of his own dominions, his actions were fettered,
and his soul was filled with awe because of the grim
man who lived among a wilderness of pigeon-holes and the
most fascinating pieces of red tape, and the wonderful
woman who was always getting into or stepping out of the
big carriage.

To the one belonged the mysteries of the 'duftar-
room,' to the other the great, reflected wilderness of
the 'Memsahib's room' where the shiny, scented dresses
hung on pegs, miles and miles up in the air, and the
just-seen plateau of the toilet-table revealed an acreage
of speckly combs, broidered ' hanafitch-bags,' and 'white-
headed' brushes.

There was no room for His Majesty the King either
in official reserve or worldly gorgeousness. He had
discovered that, ages and ages ago — before even Chimo
came to the house, or Miss Biddums had ceased griz-
zling over a packet of greasy letters which appeared to
be her chief treasure on earth. His Majesty the King,
therefore, wisely confined himself to his own territories,
where only Miss Biddums, and she feebly, disputed his
sway.

From Miss Biddums he had picked up his simple
theology and welded it to the legends of gods and devils
that he had learned in the servants' quarters.

To Miss Biddums he confided with equal trust his
tattered garments and his more serious griefs. She
would make everything whole. She knew exactly how
the Earth had been born, and had reassured the trem-
bling soul of His Majesty the King that terrible time
in July when it rained continuously for seven days and
seven nights, and — there was no Ark ready and all

HIS MAJESTY THE KING

277

the ravens had flown away ! She was the most powerful
person with whom he was brought into contact — always
excepting the two remote and silent people beyond the
nursery door.

How was His Majesty the King to know that, six
years ago, in the summer of his birth, Mrs. Austell,
turning over her husband's papers, had come upon the
intemperate letter of a foolish woman who had been
carried away by the silent man's strength and personal
beauty? How could he tell what evil the overlooked
slip of notepaper had wrought in the mind of a desper-
ately jealous wife? How could he, despite his wis-
dom, guess that his mother had chosen to make of it
excuse for a bar and a division between herself and her
husband, that strengthened and grew harder to break
with each year; that she, having unearthed this skele-
ton in the cupboard, had trained it into a household
God which should be about their path and about their
bed, and poison all their ways?

These things were beyond the province of His Maj-
esty the King. He only knew that his father was daily
absorbed in some mysterious work for a thing called the
Sirkar and that his mother was the victim alternately
of the Nautch and the Burrakliana. To these enter-
tainments she was escorted by a Captain-Man for whom
His Majesty the King had no regard.

'He doesn't laugh,' he argued with Miss Biddums,
who would fain have taught him charity. He only
makes faces wiv his mouf , and when he wants to o-muse
me I am not o-mused.' And His Majesty the King
shook his head as one who knew the deeeitfulness of this
world.

Morning and evening it was his duty to salute his
father and mother — the former with a grave shake 0/

278 UNDER THE DEODARS

the hand, and the latter with an equally grave kiss.
Once, indeed, he had put his arms round his mother's
neck, in the fashion he used towards Miss Biddums.
The openwork of his sleeve-edge caught in an earring,
and the last stage of His Majesty's little overture was
a suppressed scream and summary dismissal to the
nursery.

'It is w'ong,' thought His Majesty the King, 'to
hug Memsahibs wiv rings in veir ears. I will amem-
ber.' He never repeated the experiment.

Miss Biddums, it must be confessed, spoilt him as
much as his nature admitted, in some sort of recom-
pense, for what she called ' the hard ways of his Papa
and Mamma.' She, like her charge, knew nothing of
the trouble between man and wife — the savage con-
tempt for a woman's stupidity on the one side, or the
dull, rankling anger on the other. Miss Biddums had
looked after many little children in her time, and served
in many establishments. Being a discreet woman, she
ohserved little and said less, and, when her pupils went
over the sea to the Great Unknown, which she, with
touching confidence in her hearers, called 'Home,'
packed up her slender belongings and sought for em-
ployment afresh, lavishing all her love on each successive
batch of ingrates. Only His Majesty the King had re-
paid her affection with interest; and in his uncompre-
hending ears she had. told the tale of nearly all her hopes,
her aspirations, the hopes that were dead, and the daz-
zling glories of her ancestral home in 'Calcutta,, close to
Wellington Square.'

Everything above the average was in the eyes of His
Majesty the King 'Calcutta good.' When Miss Bid-
dums had crossed his royal will, he reversed the epithet
to vex that estimable lady, and all things evil were,

HIS MAJESTY THE KING 279

until the tears of repentance swept away spite, ' Cal-
cutta bad.'

Now and again Miss Biddums begged for him the
*are pleasure of a day in the society of the Commis-
sioner's child — the wilful four-year-old Patsie, who,
to the intense amazement of His Majesty the King,
was idolised by her parents. On thinking the question
out at length, by roads unknown to those who have
left childhood behind, he came to the conclusion that
Patsie was petted because she wore a big blue sash and
yellow hair.

This precious discovery he kept to himself. Th^
yellow hair was absolutely beyond his power, his own
tousled wig being potato-brown; but something might
be done towards the blue sash. He tied a large knot
in his mosquito-curtains in order to remember to con-
sult Patsie on their next meeting. She was the only
child he had ever spoken to, and almost the only one
that he had ever seen. The little memory and the
very large and ragged knot held good.

'Patsie, lend me your blue wiban,' said His Majesty
the King.

'You'll bewy it,' said Patsie doubtfully, mindful of
certain atrocities committed on her doll.

'No, I won't — twoofanhonour. It's for me to wear.1

'Pooh!' said Patsie. 'Boys don't wear sa-ashes.
Zey's only for dirls.'

'I didn't know.' The face of His Majesty the King
fell.

'Who wants ribands? Are you playing horses, chick-
abiddies?' said the Commissioner's wife, stepping into
the veranda.

'Toby wanted my sash,' explained Patsie.

'I don't now,' said His Majesty the King hastily,

>8o

UNDER THE DEODARS

feeling that with one of these terrible ' grown lips' his
poor little secret would be shamelessly wrenched from
him, and perhaps — most burning desecration of all —
laughed at.

'I'll give you a cracker-cap,' said the Commissioner's
wife. 'Come along with me, Toby, and we'll choose it.'

The cracker-cap was a stiff, three-pointed vermilion-
and-tinsel splendour. His Majesty the King fitted it
on his royal brow. The Commissioner's wife had a
face that children instinctively trusted, and her action,
as she adjusted the toppling middle spike, was tender.

'Will it do as well?' stammered His Majesty the
King.

'As what, little one?'

'As ve wiban?'

'Oh, quite. Go and look at yourself in the glass.'

The words were spoken in all sincerity and to help
forward any absurd ' dressing-up' amusement that the
children might take into their minds. But the young
savage has a keen sense of the ludicrous. His Majesty
the King swung the great cheval-glass down, and saw
his head crowned with the staring horror of a fool's
cap — a thing which his father would rend to pieces if
it ever came into his office. He plucked it off, and
burst into tears.

'Toby,' said the Commissioner's wife gravely, 'you
shouldn't give way to temper. I am very sorry to see
it. It's wrong.'

His Majesty the King sobbed inconsolably, and the
heart of Patsie's mother was touched. She drew the
child on to her knee. Clearly it was not temper alone.

'What is it, Toby? Won't you tell me? Aren't you
well?'

The torrent of sobs and speech met, and fought for a

HIS MAJESTY THE KING 281

time, with chokings and gulpings and gasps. Then, in
a sudden rush, His Majesty the King was delivered of
a few inarticulate sounds, followed by the words — 'Go
a — way you — dirty — little debbil ! '
' Toby ! What do you mean? '

'It's what he'd say. I know it is! He said vat when
vere was only a little, little eggy mess, on my t-t-unic;
and he'd say it again, and laugh, if I went in wif vat
on my head.'

'Who would say that?'

'M-m-my Papa! And I fought if I had ve blue
wiban, he'd let me play in ve waste-paper basket under
ve table.'

'What blue riband, childie?'

' Ve same vat Patsie had — ve big blue wiban w-w- wound
my t-ttummy!'

'What is it, Toby? There's something on your
mind. Tell me all about it, and perhaps I can help.'

'Isn't anyfing,' sniffed His Majesty, mindful of his
manhood, and raising his head from the motherly bosom
upon which it was resting. 'I only fought vat you- —
you petted Patsie 'cause she had ve blue wiban, and —
and if I'd had ve blue wiban too, m-my Papa w-would
pet me.'

The secret was out, and His Majesty the King sobbed
bitterly in spite of the arms around him, and the murmur
of comforj, on his heated little forehead.

Enter Patsie tumultuously, embarrassed by several
lengths of the Commissioner's pet mahsccr-rod. 'Turn
along, Toby! Zere's a chu-chu lizard in xe chick, and
I've told Chimo to watch him till we turn. If we poke
him wiz zis his tail will go wigglc-wigglc and fall off,
Turn along! I can'l weach.'

'I'm comin',' said His Majesty the King, climbing

282

UNDER THE DEODARS

down from the Commissioner's wife's knee after a hasty
kiss.

Two minutes later, the chu-chu lizard's tail was wrig-
gling on the matting of the veranda, and the children
were gravely poking it with splinters from the chick, to
urge its exhausted vitality into 'just one wiggie more,
'cause it doesn't hurt chu-chu. .'

The Commissioner's wife stood in the doorway and

watched — 'Poor little mite! A blue sash and my

own precious Patsie! I wonder if the best of us, or we
who love them best, ever understood what goes on in
their topsy-turvy little heads.'

She went indoors to devise a tea for His Majesty the
King.

'Their souls aren't in their tummies at that age in
this climate,' said the Commissioner's wife, 'but they
are not far off. I wonder if I could make Mrs. Austell
understand. Poor little fellow!'

With simple craft, the Commissioner's wife called
on Mrs. Austell and spoke long and lovingly about chil-
dren; inquiring specially for His Majesty the King.

'He's with his governess,' said Mrs. Austell, and the
tone showed that she was not interested.

The Commissioner's wife, unskilled in the art of
war, continued her questionings. 'I don't know,' said
Mrs. Austell. 'These things are left to Miss Biddums,
and, of course, she does not ill-treat the child.'

The Commissioner's wife left hastily. The last sen-
tence jarred upon her nerves. 'Doesn't ill-treat the child !
As if that were all ! I wonder what Tom would say if I
only "didn't ill-treat" Patsie!'

Thenceforward, His Majesty the King was an hon-
oured guest at the Commissioner's house, and the
chosen friend of Patsie, with whom he blundered into

HIS MAJESTY THE KING 28j

as many scrapes as the compound and the servants'
quarters afforded. Patsie's Mamma was always ready
to give counsel, help, and sympathy, and, if need were
and callers few, to enter into their games with an abandon
that would have shocked the sleek-haired subalterns who
squirmed painfully in their chairs when they came to call
on her whom they profanely nicknamed ' Mother Bunch/
Yet, in spite of Patsie and Patsie's Mamma, and the
love that these two lavished upon him, His Majesty the
King fell grievously from grace, and committed no less a
sin than that of theft — unknown, it is true, but burden-
some.

There came a man to the door one day, when His
Majesty was playing in the hall and the bearer had gone
to dinner, with a packet for His Majesty's Mamma. And
he put it upon the hall- table, and said that there was no
answer, and departed.

Presently, the pattern of the dado ceased to interest
His Majesty, while the packet, a white, neatly wrapped
one of fascinating shape, interested him very much in-
deed. His Mamma was out, so was Miss Biddums, and
there was pink string round the packet. He greatly
desired pink string. It would help him in many of his
little businesses — the haulage across the floor of his small
cane-chair, the torturing of Chimo, who could never
understand harness — and so forth. If he took the string
it would be his own, and nobody would be any the wiser.
He certainly could not pluck up sufficient courage to ask
Mamma for it. Wherefore, mounting upon a c hair. In-
carefully untied the string and, behold, the stiff white
paper spread out in four directions, and revealed a beauti-
ful little leal her box with gold lines upon it ! I le t ried to
replace the string, but thai was a failure. So he opened
the box to get full satisfaction for his iniquity, and saw a

284

UNDER THE DEODARS

most beautiful Star that shone and winked, and was al-
together lovely and desirable.

'Vat,' said His Majesty meditatively, 'is a 'parkle
cwown, like what I will wear when I go to heaven. I will
wear it on my head — Miss Biddums says so. I would like
to wear it now. I would like to play wiv it. I will take it
away and play wiv it, very careful, until Mamma asks
for it. I fink it was bought for me to play wiv — same as
my cart.'

His Majesty the King was arguing against his con-
science, and he knew it, for he thought immediately after:
' Never mind, I will keep it to play wiv until Mamma says
where it is, and then I will say — "I tookt it and I am
sorry." I will not hurt it because it is a 'parkle cwown.
But Miss Biddums will tell me to put it back. I will not
show it to Miss Biddums.'

If Mamma had come in at that moment all would have
gone well. She did not, and His Majesty the King stuffed
paper, case, and jewel into the breast of his blouse and
marched to the nursery.

'When Mamma asks I will tell,' was the salve that he
laid upon his conscience. But Mamma never asked, and
for three whole days His Majesty the King gloated over
his treasure. It was of no earthly use to him, but it was
splendid, and, for aught he knew, something dropped from
the heavens themselves. Still Mamma made no en-
quiries, and it seemed to him, in his furtive peeps, as
though the shiny stones grew dim. What was the use of a
'parkle cwown if it made a little boy feel all bad in his in-
side? He had the pink string as well as the other treasure,
but greatly he wished that he had not gone beyond the
string. It was his first experience of iniquity, and it
pained him after the flush of possession and secret delight
in the ' 'parkle cwown' had died away.

HIS MAJESTY THE KING

285

Each day that he delayed rendered confession to the
people beyond the nursery doors more impossible. Now
and again he determined to put himself in the path of the
beautifully attired lady as she was going out, and explain
that he and no one else was the possessor of a ' 'parkle
cwown,' most beautiful and quite unenquired for. But
she passed hurriedly to her carriage, and the opportunity
was gone before His Majesty the King could draw the deep
breath which clinches noble resolve. The dread secret
cut him off from Miss Biddums, Patsie, and the Com-
missioner's wife, and — doubly hard fate — when he
brooded over it Patsie said, and told her mother, that he
was cross.

The days were very long to His Majesty the King, and
the nights longer still. Miss Biddums had informed him
more than once, what was the ultimate destiny of 'fieves/
and when he passed the interminable mud flanks of the
Central Jail, he shook in his little strapped shoes.

But release came after an afternoon spent in playing
boats by the edge of the tank at the bottom of the garden.
His Majesty the King went to tea, and, for the first time
in his memory, the meal revolted him. His nose was very
cold, and his cheeks were burning hot. There was a
weight about his feet, and he pressed his head several
times to make sure that it was not swelling as he sat.

'I feel vevy funny,' said His Majesty the King, rubbing
his nose.,, ' Vere's a buzz-buzz in my head.'

He went to bed quietly. Miss Biddums was out and
the bearer undressed him.

The sin of the ' 'parkle cwown' was forgotten in the '
acuteness of the discomfort to which he roused after a
leaden sleep of some hours. lie was thirsty, and the
bearer had forgotten to leave the drinking-water. 'Miss
Biddums! Miss Biddums! ['msokirstyl'

•t

286

UNDER THE DEODARS

No answer. Miss Biddums had leave to attend the
wedding of a Calcutta schoolmate. His Majesty the King
had forgotten that.

'I want a dwink of water!' he cried, but his voice was
dried up in his throat. 'I want a dwink! Vere is ve
glass? '

He sat up in bed and looked round. There was a mur-
mur of voices from the other side of the nursery door. It
was better to face the terrible unknown than to choke in
the dark. He slipped out of bed, but his feet were
strangely wilful, and he reeled once or twice. Then he
pushed the door open and staggered — a puffed and purple-
faced little figure — into the brilliant light of the dining-
room full of pretty ladies.

'I'm vevy hot! I'm vevy uncomfitivle,' moaned His
Majesty the King, clinging to the portiere, 'and vere's
no water in ve glass, and I'm so kirsty. Give me a dwink
of water.'

An apparition in black and white — His Majesty the
King could hardly see distinctly — lifted him up to the
level of the table, and felt his wrists and forehead. The
water came, and he drank deeply, his teeth chattering
against the edge of the tumbler. Then every one seemed
to go away — every one except the huge man in black and
white, who carried him back to his bed; the mother and
father following. And the sin of the "parkle cwown'
rushed back and took possession of the terrified soul.

'I'm a fief!' he gasped. 'I want to tell Miss Biddums
vat I'm a fief. Vere is Miss Biddums? '

Miss Biddums had come and was bending over him.
'I'm a fief,' he whispered. 'A fief — like ve men in the
pwison. But I'll tell now. I tookt — I tookt ve 'parkle
cwown when the man that came left it in ve hall. I bwoke
ve paper and ve little bwown box, and it looked shiny,, and

HIS MAJESTY THE KING

287

I tookt it to play wif, and I was afwaid. It's in ve dooly-
box at ve bottom. No one never asked for it, but I was
afwaid. Oh, go an' get ve dooly-box ! '

Miss Biddums obediently stooped to the lowest shelf of
the almirah and unearthed the big paper box in which His
Majesty the King kept his dearest possessions. Under
the tin soldiers, and a layer of mud pellets for a pellet-
bow, winked and blazed a diamond star, wrapped roughly
in a half -sheet of notepaper whereon were written a few
words.

Somebody was crying at the head of the bed, and a
man's hand touched the forehead of His Majesty the
King, who grasped the packet and spread it on the bed.

'Vat is ve 'parkle cwown,' he said, and wept bitterly;
for now that he had made restitution he would fain have
kept the shining splendour with him.

'It concerns you too,' said a voice at the head of the
bed. ' Read the note. This is not the time to keep back
anything.'

The note was curt, very much to the point, and signed
by a single initial. '// you wear this to-morrow night I
shall know what to expect.1 The date was three weeks old.

A whisper followed, and the deeper voice returned:
'And you drifted as far apart as that! I think it makes us
quits now, doesn't it? Oh, can't we drop this folly once
and for all? Is it worth it, darling? '

'Kiss tnc too,' said His Majesty the King dreamily.
' You isn'-i vevy angwy , is you? '

The fever burned itself out, and His Majesty the King
slept.

When he waked, it was in a new world peopled by his
father and mother as well as Miss Biddums: and then
was much love in that world and no morsel of fear, ano
more petting than was good for Several little hoys. Hi*

288

UNDER THE DEODARS

Majesty the King was too young to moralise on the un-
certainty of things human, or he would have been im-
pressed with the singular advantages of crime — ay, black
sin. Behold, he had stolen the ' 'parkle cwown,' and his
reward was Love, and the right to play in the waste-
paper basket under the table 'for always.'

He trotted over to spend an afternoon with Patsie, and
the Commissioner's wife would have kissed him. 'No,
not vere,' said His Majesty the King, with superb inso-
lence, fencing one corner of his mouth with his hand.
'Vat's my Mamma's place — vere she kisses me.'

'Oh!' said the Commissioner's wife briefly. Then to
herself: 'Well, I suppose I ought to be glad for his sake.
Children are selfish little grubs and — I've got my Patsie/

THE DRUMS OF THE FORE AND AFT

In the Army List they still stand as * The Fore and Fit
Princess Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen-Anspach's Merther-
Tydfilshire Own Royal Loyal Light Infantry, Regimental
District 329 A,' but the Army through all its barracks and
canteens knows them now as the 'Fore and Aft.' They
may in time do something that shall make their new title
honourable, but at present they are bitterly ashamed, and
the man who calls them ' Fore and Aft ' does so at the risk
of the head which is on his shoulders.

Two words breathed into the stables of a certain
Cavalry Regiment will bring the men out into the streets
with belts and mops and bad language; but a whisper of
' Fore and Aft ' will bring out this regiment with rifles.

Their one excuse is that they came again and did their
best to finish the job in style. But for a time all thci
world knows that they were openly beaten, whipped,
dumb-cowed, shaking and afraid. The men know it;
their officers know it; the Horse Guards know it, and
when the next war conns the enemy will know it also.
There are two or three regiments of the Line that have a
black mark against their names which they will then wipe
out; and-it will be excessively inconvenient for the troops
upon whom they do their w iping.

The courage of the British soldier is officially supposed
to be above proof, and, as a general rule, it is so. The
exceptions are decently shovelled out of sight, only to be
referred to in the freshest of unguarded talk that occas-

28Q

V

2qo UNDER THE DEODARS

ionally swamps a Mess-table at midnight. Then one
hears strange and horrible stories of men not following
their officers, of orders being given by those who had no
right to give them, and of disgrace that, but for the stand-
ing luck of the British Army, might have ended in
brilliant disaster. These are unpleasant stories to listen
to, and the Messes tell them under their breath, sitting by
the big wood fires, and the young officer bows his head
and thinks to himself, please God, his memshall never be-
have unhandily.

The British soldier is not altogether to be blamed
for occasional lapses; but this verdict he should not know.
A moderately intelligent General will waste six months
in mastering the craft of the particular war that he may
be waging; a Colonel may utterly misunderstand the
capacity of his regiment for three months after it has
taken the field, and even a Company Commander may
err and be deceived as to the temper and temperament
of his own handful: wherefore the soldier, and the soldier
of to-day more particularly, should not be blamed for
falling back. He should be shot or hanged afterwards —
to encourage the others; but he should not be vilified
in newspapers, for that is want of tact and waste of
space.

He has, let us say, been in the service of the Empress
for, perhaps, four years. He will leave in another two
years. He has no inherited morals, and four years are
not sufficient to drive toughness into his fibre, or to
teach him how holy a thing is his Regiment. He wants
to drink, he wants to enjoy himself — in India he wants
to save money — and he does not in the least like get-
ting hurt. He has received just sufficient education to
make him understand half the purport of the orders he
receives, and to speculate on the nature of clean, incised.

THE DRUMS OF THE FORE AND AFT

291

and shattering wounds. Thus, if he is told to deploy
under fire preparatory to an attack, he knows that he
runs a very great risk of being killed while he is de-
ploying, and suspects that he is being thrown away to
gain ten minutes' time. He may either deploy with des-
perate swiftness, or he may shuffle, or bunch, or break,
according to the discipline under which he has lain for
four years.

Armed with imperfect knowledge, cursed with the
rudiments of an imagination, hampered by the intense
selfishness of the lower classes, and unsupported by any
regimental associations, this young man is suddenly in-
troduced to an enemy who in eastern lands is always
ugly, generally tall and hairy, and frequently noisy.
If he looks to the right and the left and sees old soldiers
—men of twelve years' service, who, he knows, know
what they are about — taking a charge, rush, or demon-
stration without embarrassment, he is consoled and
applies his shoulder to the butt of his rifle with a stout
heart. His peace is the greater if he hears a senior,
who has taught him his soldiering and broken his head
on" occasion, whispering: 'They'll shout and carry on
like this for five minutes. Then they'll rush in, and
then we've got 'em by the short hairs!'

But, on the other hand, if he sees only men of his own
term of service, turning white and playing with their
triggers and saying: 'What the Hell's up now?' while
the Company Commanders are sweating into their
sword-hilts and shouting: 'Front-rank, fix bayonets.
Steady there steady! Sight for three hundred no,
for five! Lie down, all! Steady! Front-rank kneel.1'
and so forth, he becomes unhappy, and grows acutely
miserable when he hears a comrade turn over with the
rattle of fire-irons falling into the lender, and the grunt

292

UNDER THE DEODARS

of a pole-axed ox. If he can be moved about a little
and allowed to watch the effect of his own fire on the
enemy he feels merrier, and may be then worked up to
the blind passion of fighting, which is, contrary to gen-
eral belief, controlled by a chilly Devil and shakes men
like ague. If he is not moved about, and begins to feel
cold at the pit of the stomach, and in that crisis is badly
mauled and hears orders that were never given, he will
break, and he will break badly, and of all things under
the light of the Sun there is nothing more terrible than
a broken British regiment. When the worst comes to
the worst and the panic is really epidemic, the men
must be e'en let go, and the Company Commanders had
better escape to the enemy and stay there for safety's
sake. If they can be made to come again they are not
pleasant men to meet; because they will not break twice.

About thirty years from this date, when we have
succeeded in half-educating everything that wears
trousers, our Army will be a beautifully unreliable
machine. It will know too much and it will do too
little. Later still, when all men are at the mental level
of the officer of to-day, it will sweep the earth. Speak-
ing roughly, you must employ either blackguards or
gentlemen, or, best of all, blackguards commanded by
gentlemen, to do butcher's work with efficiency and
despatch. The ideal soldier should, of course, think
for himself — the Pocket-book says so. Unfortunately,
to attain this virtue, he has to pass through the phase
of thinking of himself, and that is misdirected genius.
A blackguard may be slow to think for himself, but he
is genuinely anxious to kill, and a little punishment
teaches him how to guard his own skin and perforate
another's. A powerfully prayerful Highland Regi-
ment, officered by rank Presbyterians, is, perhaps, one

THE DRUMS OF THE FORE AND AFT

degree more terrible in action than a hard-bitten thou-
sand of irresponsible Irish ruffians led by most improper
young unbelievers. But these things prove the rule —
which is that the midway men are not to be trusted
alone. They have ideas about the value of life and an
upbringing that has not taught them to go on and take
the chances. They are carefully unprovided with a
backing of comrades who have been shot over, and until
that backing is re-introduced, as a great many Regi-
mental Commanders intend it shall be, they are more
liable to disgrace themselves than the size of the Empire
or the dignity of the Army allows. Their officers are
as good as good can be, because their training begins
early, and God has arranged that a clean-run youth of
the British middle classes shall, in the matter of back-
bone, brains, and bowels, surpass all other youths. For
this reason a child of eighteen will stand up, doing
nothing, with a tin sword in his hand and joy in his
heart until he is dropped. If he dies, he dies like a
gentleman. If he lives, he writes Home that he has
been 'potted,' 'sniped,' 'chipped,' or 'cut over,' and
sits down to besiege Government for a wound-gratuity
until the next little war breaks out, when he perjures
himself before a Medical Board, blarneys his Colonel,
burns incense round his Adjutant, and is allowed to go
to the Front once more.

Which~homily brings me directly to a brace of the
most finished little fiends that ever banged drum or
tootled fife in the Band of a British Regiment. They
ended their sinful career by open and flagrant mutiny
and were shot for it. Their names were Jakin and
Lew — Piggy Lew — and they were bold, bad drummer-
boys, both of thein frequently birched by the Drum-
Major of the Fore and Aft.

294

UNDER THE DEODARS

Jakin was a stunted child of fourteen, and Lew was
about the same age. When not looked after, they
smoked and drank. They swore habitually after the
manner of the Barrack-room, which is cold-swearing
and comes from between clinched teeth, and they fought
religiously once a week. Jakin had sprung from some
London gutter and may or may not have passed through
Dr. Barnardo's hands ere he arrived at the dignity of
drummer-boy. Lew could remember nothing except
the Regiment and the delight of listening to the Band
from his earliest years. He hid somewhere in his grimy
little soul a genuine love for music, and was most mis-
takenly furnished with the head of a cherub: insomuch
that beautiful ladies who watched the Regiment in
church were wont to speak of him as a 'darling.' They
never heard his vitriolic comments on their manners
and morals, as he walked back to barracks with the
Band and matured fresh causes of offence against
Jakin.

The other drummer-boys hated both lads on account
of their illogical conduct. Jakin might be pounding
Lew, or Lew might be rubbing Jakin's head in the
dirt, but any attempt at aggression on the part of an
outsider was met by the combined forces of Lew and
Jakin; and the consequences were painful. The boys
were the Ishmaels of the corps, but wealthy Ishmaels,
for they sold battles, in alternate weeks for the sport of
the barracks when they were not pitted against .other
boys; and thus amassed money.

On this particular day there was dissension in the
camp. They had just been convicted afresh of smok-
ing, which is bad for little boys who use plug-tobacco,
and Lew's contention was that Jakin had ' stunk so
'orrid bad from keepin' the pipe in pocket,' that he and

THE DRUMS OF THE FORE AND AFT 295

he alone was responsible for the birching they were both
tingling under.

'I tell you I 'id the pipe back o' barracks/ said Jakin
pacifically.

'You're a bloomin' liar,' said Lew without heat.

' You're a bloomin' little barstard,' said Jakin, strong
in the knowledge that his own ancestry was unknown.
Now there is one word in the extended vocabulary
of Barrack-room abuse that cannot pass without com-
ment. You may call a man a thief and risk nothing.
You may even call him a coward without finding more
than a boot whiz past your ear, but you must not call a
man a bastard unless you are prepared to prove it on
his front teeth.

' You might ha' kep' that till I wasn't so sore,' said
Lew sorrowfully, dodging round Jakin's guard.

'I'll make you sorer,' said Jakin genially, and got
home on Lew's alabaster forehead. All would have
gone well and this story, as the books say, would never
have been written, had not his evil fate prompted the
Bazar-Sergeant's son, a long, cmployless man of five-
and-twenty, to put in an appearance after the first
round. He was eternally in need of money, and knew
that the boys had silver.

'Fighting again,' said he. 'I'll report you to my
father, and he'll report you to the Colour-Sergeant.'

'What's that to you?' said Jakin with an unpleasant
Jilation of the nostrils.

'Oh! nothing to mc. You'll get into trouble, and
you've been up too often to afford that.'

'What the Hell do you know about what we've
done?' asked Lew the Seraph. ' Von aren't in the Army,
you lousy, cadging civilian.'

He closed in on the man's left Hank.

296

UNDER THE DEODARS

'Jes' 'cause you find two gentlemen settlin' their
diff'rences with their fistes you stick in your ugly nose
where you aren't wanted. Run 'ome to your 'arf-caste
slut of a Ma — or we'll give you what-for,' said Jakin.

The man attempted reprisals by knocking the boys'
heads together. The scheme would have succeeded
had not Jakin punched him vehemently in the stomach,
or had Lew refrained from kicking his shins. They
fought together, bleeding and breathless, for half an
hour, and, after heavy punishment, triumphantly pulled
down their opponent as terriers pull down a jackal.

'Now,' gasped Jakin, 'I'll give you what-for.' He
proceeded to pound the man's features while Lew
stamped on the outlying portions of his anatomy.
Chivalry is not a strong point in the composition ol
the average drummer-boy. He fights, as do his betters,
to make his mark.

Ghastly was the ruin that escaped, and awful was the
wrath of the Bazar-Sergeant. Awful too was the scene
in Orderly-room when the two reprobates appeared to
answer the charge of half -murdering a 'civilian.' The
Bazar-Sergeant thirsted for a criminal action, and his
son lied. The boys stood to attention while the black
clouds of evidence accumulated.

' You little devils are more trouble than the rest of the
Regiment put together,' said the Colonel angrily. 'One
might as well admonish thistledown, and I can't well
put you in cells or under stoppages. You must be
birched again.'

'Beg y' pardon, Sir. Can't we say nothin' in our
own defence, Sir?' shrilled Jakin.

'Hey! What? Are you going to argue with tne?'
said the Colonel.

'No, Sir,' said Lew. 'But if a man come to you, Sir,

THE DRUMS OF THE FORE AND AFT

and said he was going to report you, Sir, for 'aving a
bit of a turn-up with a friend, Sir, an' wanted to get
money out o' you, Sir '

The Orderly-room exploded in a roar of laughter.
'Well?' said the Colonel.

'That was what that measly jarnwar there did, Sir, and
'e'd 'a' done it, Sir, if we 'adn't prevented 'im. We didn't
'it 'im much, Sir. 'E 'adn't no manner o' right to inter-
fere with us, Sir. I don't mind bein' birched by the Drum-
Major, Sir, nor yet reported by any Corp'ral, but I'm — ■
but I don't think it's fair, Sir, for a civilian to come an'
talk over a man in the Army.'

A second shout of laughter shook the Orderly -room,
but the Colonel was grave.

' What sort of characters have these boys?' he asked
of the Regimental Sergeant-Major.

'Accordin' to the Bandmaster, Sir,' returned that
revered official— the only soul in the Regiment whom the
boys feared — ' they do everything but lie, Sir.'

'Is it like we'd go for that man for fun, Sir?' said Lew,
pointing to the plaintiff.

'Oh, admonished,- — admonished!' said the Colonel
testily, and when the boys had gone he read the Bazar-
Sergeant's son a lecture on the sin of unprofitable med-
dling, and gave orders that the Bandmaster should keep
the Drums in better discipline.

'If eithg* of you come to practice again with so much as
a scratch pn your two ugly little faces,' thundered the
Bandmaster, 'I'll tell the Drum-Major to take the skin
off your backs. Understand that, you young devils.'

Then he repented of his speech for just the length of
time that Lew, looking like a seraph in red worsted em-
bellishments, took the place of one of the trumpets in
hospital — and rendered the echo of a battle-piece. Lew

1

UNDER THE DEODARS

certainly was a musician, and had often in his more
exalted moments expressed a yearning to master every in-
strument of the Band.

' There's nothing to prevent your becoming a Band-
master, Lew/ said the Bandmaster, who had composed
waltzes of his own, and worked day and night in the in-
terests of the Band.

'What did he say? ' demanded Jakin after practice.

' 'Said I might be a bloomin' Bandmaster, an' be asked
in to 'ave a glass o' sherry-wine on Mess-nights/

'Ho! 'Said you might be a bloomin' non-combatant,
did 'e! That's just about wot 'e would say. When I've
put in my boy's service — it's a bloomin' shame that
doesn't count for pension — I'll take on as a privit. Then
I'll be a Lance in a year — knowin' what I know about the
ins and outs o' things. In three years I'll be a bloomin'
Sergeant. I won't marry then, not I! I'll 'old on and
learn the orf'cers' ways an' apply for exchange into a
reg'ment that doesn't know all about me. Then I'll be a
bloomin' orf'cer. Then I'll ask you to 'ave a glass o'
sherry-wine, Mister Lew, an' you'll bloomin' well 'ave to
stay in the hanty-room while the Mess-Sergeant brings it
to your dirty 'ands.'

* 'S'pose I'm going to be a Bandmaster? Not I, quite.
I'll be a orf'cer too. There's nothin' like takin' to a thing
an' stickin' to it, the Schoolmaster says. The Reg'ment
don't go 'ome for another seven years. I'll be a Lance
then or near to.'

Thus the boys discussed their futures, and conducted
themselves piously for a week. That is to say, Lew
started a flirtation with the Colour-Sergeant's daughter,
aged thirteen — 'not,' as he explained to Jakin, 'with any
intention o' matrimony, but by way o' keepin' my 'and
in.' And the black-haired Cris Delighan enjoyed that

THE DRUMS OF THE FORE AND AFT 299

flirtation more than previous ones, and theother drummer-
boys raged furiously together, and Jakin preached
sermons on the dangers of 'bein' tangled along o' petti-
coats.'

But neither love nor virtue would have held Lew long
in the paths of propriety had not the rumour gone abroad
that the Regiment was to be sent on active service, to take
part in a war which, for the sake of brevity, we will call
' The War of the Lost Tribes.'

The barracks had the rumour almost before the Mess-
room, and of all the nine hundred men in barracks, not
ten had seen a shot fired in anger. The Colonel had,
twenty years ago, assisted at a Frontier expedition; one ol
the Majors had seen service at the Cape; a confirmed
deserter in E Company had helped to clear streets in
Ireland; but that was all. The Regiment had been put
by for many years. The overwhelming mass of its rank
and file had from three to four years' service; the non-
commissioned officers were under thirty years old; and
men and sergeants alike had forgotten to speak of the
stories written in brief upon the Colours the New
Colours that had been formally blessed by an Archbishop
in England ere the Regiment came away.

They wanted to go to the Front they were enthusias-
tically anxious to go but they had no knowledge of what
war meant, and there was none to tell them. They were an
educated* regiment, the percentage of school-certificates
in their ranks was high, and most of the men could do
more than read and write. They had been recruited in
loyal observance of the territorial idea; but they them-
selves had no notion of that idea. They were made up of
drafts from an over-populated manufacturing district.
The system had put ilesh and muscle upon their small
bones, but it could not put heart into the sons of those

360

UNDER THE DEODARS

who for generations had done overmuch work for over-
scanty pay, had sweated in drying-rooms, stooped over
looms, coughed among white-lead, and shivered on lime-
barges. The men had found food and rest in the Army,
and now they were going to fight ' niggers ' — people who
ran away if you shook a stick at them. Wherefore they
cheered lustily when the rumour ran, and the shrewd,
clerkly non-commissioned officers speculated on the
chances of batta and of saving their pay. At Head-
quarters, men said: 'The Fore and Fit have never been
under fire within the last generation. Let us, therefore,
break them in easily by setting them to guard lines of com-
munication.' And this would have been done but for the
fact that British Regiments were wanted — badly wanted
— at the Front, and there were doubtful Native Regi-
ments that could fill the minor duties. 1 Brigade 'em with
two strong Regiments,' said Headquarters. 'They may
be knocked about a bit, but they'll learn their business be-
fore they come through. Nothing like a night-alarm and
a little cutting-up of stragglers to make a Regiment smart
in the field. Wait till they've had half a dozen sentries'
throats cut.'

The Colonel wrote with delight that the temper of his
men was excellent, that the Regiment was all that could
be wished, and as sound as a bell. The Majors smiled
with a sober joy, and the subalterns waltzed in pairs down
the Mess-room after dinner, and nearly shot themselves
at revolver-practice. But there was consternation in the
hearts of Jakin and Lew. What was to be done with the
Drums? Would the Band go to the Front? How many
of the Drums would accompany the Regiment?

They took council together, sitting in a tree and smok-
ing.

'It's more than a bloomin' toss-up they'll leave us

THE DRUMS OF THE FORE AND AFT

be'ind at the Depot with the women. You'll like that/
said Jakin sarcastically.

"Cause o' Cris, y' mean? Wot's a woman, or a 'ole
bloomin' depot o' women, 'longside o' the chanst of field-
service? You know I'm as keen on goin' as you,' said Lew.

' 'Wish I was a bloomin' bugler,' said Jakin sadly.
'They'll take Tom Kidd along, that I can plaster a wall
with, an' like as not they won't take us.'

'Then let's go an' make Tom Kidd so bloomin' sick 'e
can't bugle no more. You 'old 'is 'ands an' I'll kick 'im,'
said Lew, wriggling on the branch.

'That ain't no good neither. We ain't the sort o' char-
acters to presoon on our rep'tations — they're bad. If they
have the Band at the Depot we don't go, and no error
there. If they take the Band we may get cast for medi-
cal unfitness. Are you medical fit, Piggy?' said Jakin,
digging Lew in the ribs with force.

' Yus,' said Lew with an oath. 'The Doctor says your
'cart's weak through smokin' on an empty stummick.
Throw a chest an' I'll try yer.'

Jakin threw out his chest, which Lew smote with all his
might. Jakin turned very pale, gasped, crowed, screwed
up his eyes and said — 'That's all right.'

'You'll do,' said Lew. 'I've 'card o' men dying when
you 'it 'em fair on the breastbone.'

'Don't bring us no nearer goin', though,' said Jakin.
'Do you"know where we're ordered?'

I Gawd knows, an' 'E won't split on a pal. Somewheres
up to the Front to kill Paythans hairy big beggars that
turn you inside out if they get 'old o' you. They say their
women are good-looking, too.'

'Any loot?' asked the abandoned Jakin.

'Not a bloomin' anna, they say, unless you dig up the
ground an' see what the niggers 'ave 'id. They're a poor

$02

UNDER THE DEODARS

lot.' Jakin stood upright on the branch and gazed across
the plain.

'Lew,' said he, ' there's the Colonel coming. 'Colonel's
a good old beggar. Let's go an' talk to 'im.'

Lew nearly fell out of the tree at the audacity of the
suggestion. Like Jakin he feared not God, neither re-
garded he Man, but there are limits even to the audacity
of a drummer-boy, and to speak to a Colonel was

' But Jakin had slid down the trunk and doubled in the.
direction of the Colonel. That officer was walking
wrapped in thought and visions of a C. B. — yes, even a K.
C. B., for had he not at command one of the best Regi-
ments of the Line — the Fore and Fit? And he was aware
of two small boys charging down upon him. Once before
it had been solemnly reported to him that 'the Drums
were in a state of mutiny,' Jakin and Lew being the ring-
leaders. This looked like an organised conspiracy.

The boys halted at twenty yards, walked to the regula-
tion four paces, and saluted together, each as well set-up
as a ramrod and little taller.

The Colonel was in a genial mood; the boys appeared
very forlorn and unprotected on the desolate plain, and
one of them was handsome.

'Well!' said the Colonel, recognising them. 'Are you
going to pull me down in the open? I'm sure I never in-
interfere with you, even though' — he sniffed suspiciously
— 'you have been smoking.'

It was time to strike while the iron was hoc. Their
hearts beat tumultuously.

'Beg y' pardon, Sir,' began Jakin. 'The Reg'ment's
ordered on active service, Sir? '

'So I believe,' said the Colonel courteously.

'Is the Band goin', Sir?' said both together. Then,
without pause, 'We're goin', Sir. ain't we?'

THE DRUMS OF THE FORE AND AFT

'You!' said the Colonel stepping back the more fully to
take in the two small figures. 'You! You'd die in the
first march.'

'No, we wouldn't, Sir. We can march with the Reg'-
ment anywheres — p'rade an' anywhere else,' said Jakin.

'If Tom Kidd goes 'e'll shut up like a clasp-knife,' said
Lew. ' Tom 'as very-close veins in both 'is legs, Sir.'

' Very how much? '

'Very-close veins, Sir. That's why they swells after
long p'rade, Sir. If 'e can go, we can go, Sir.'

Again the Colonel looked at them long and intently.

' Yes, the Band is going,' he said as gravely as though he
had been addressing a brother officer. 'Have you any
parents, either of you two? '

' No, Sir,' rejoicingly from Lew and Jakin. ' We're both
orphans, Sir. There's no one to be considered of on our
account, Sir. '

' You poor little sprats, and you want to go up to the
Front with the Regiment, do you? Why? '

'I've wore the Queen's Uniform for two years,' said
Jakin. 'It's very 'ard, Sir, that a man don't get no rec-
ompense for doin' of 'is dooty, Sir.'

'An' — an' if I don't go, Sir,' interrupted Lew, 'the
Bandmaster 'e says 'e'll catch an' make a bloo— a blessed
musician o' me, Sir. Before I've seen any serv ice, Sir.'

The Colonel made no answer for a long time. Then he
said quietly: 'If you're passed by the Doctor I dare say
you can go. I shouldn't smoke if I were you.'

The boys saluted and disappeared. The( 'oloncl walked
home and told the story to his wife, who nearly cried over
it. The Colonel was well pleased. If that was the
temper of the children, what would not the men do?

Jakin and Lew entered the boys' barrack -room with
great stateliness, and refused to hold any conversation

-\

UNDER THE DEODARS

with their comrades for at least ten minutes. Then,
bursting with pride, Jakin drawled: 'I've bin inter-
vooin' the Colonel. Good old beggar is the Colonel.
Says I to 'im " Colonel," says I, "let me go to the
Front, along o' the Reg'ment." — "To the Front you
shall go," says 'e, "an' I only wish there was more like
you among the dirty little devils that bang the bloomin'
drums." Kidd, if you throw your 'courtrements at me
for tellin' you the truth to your own advantage, your
legs'll swell.'

None the less there was a Battle-Royal in the barrack-
room, for the boys were consumed with envy and hate,
and neither Jakin nor Lew behaved in conciliatory
wise. .

'I'm goin' out to say adoo to my girl,' said Lew, tc
cap the climax. 'Don't none o' you . touch my kit
because it's wanted for active service; me bein' specially
invited to go by the Colonel.'

He strolled forth and whistled in the clump of trees
at the back of the Married Quarters till Cris came to
him, and, the preliminary kisses being given and taken,
Lew began to explain the situation.

'I'm goin' to the Front with the Reg'ment,' he said
valiantly.

'Piggy, you're a little liar/ said Cris, but her heart
misgave her, for Lew was not in the habit of lying.

'Liar yourself, Cris,' said Lew, slipping an arm round
her. 'I'm goin'. When the Reg'ment marches out
you'll see me with 'em, all galliant and gay. Give us
another kiss, Cris, on the strength of it.'

'If you'd on'y a-stayed at the Depot — where you
ought to ha' bin — you could get as many of 'em as — as
you dam please,' whimpered Cris, putting up her mouth.

'It's 'ard, Cris. I grant you it's 'ard. But what's a

THE DRUMS OF THE FORE AND AFT

man to do? If I'd a-stayed at the Depot, you wouldn't
think anything of me.'

'Like as not, but I'd 'ave you with me, Piggy. An'
all the thinkin' in the world isn't like kissin'.'

'An' all the kissin' in the world isn't like 'avin' a medal
to wear on the front o' your coat.'

' You won't get no medal.'

'Oh yus, I shall though. Me an' Jakin are the only
acting-drummers that'll be took along. All the rest is
full men, an' we'll get our medals with them.'

'They might ha' taken anybody but you, Piggy.
You'll get killed — you're so venturesome. Stay with
me, Piggy, darlin', down at the Depot, an' I'll love you
true, for ever.'

'Ain't you goin' to do that now, Cris? You said you
was.'

'O' course I am, but th' other's more comfortable.
Wait till you've growed a bit, Piggy. You aren't no
taller than me now.'

'I've bin in the Army for two years an' I'm not goin'
to get out of a chanst o' seein' service an' don't you try
to make me do so. I'll come back, Cris, an' when I take on
as a man I'll marry you- marry you when I'm a Lance.'

'Promise, Piggy?'

Lew reflected on the future as arranged by Jakin a
short time previously, but Cris's mouth was very near
to his own.

'I promise, s'elp me, Gawd 1 5 said he.

Cris slid an arm round his neck.

'I won't 'old you back no more, Piggy, (io away
an' get your medal, an' Til make you a new button-bag
as nice as 1 know how,' she whispered.

'Put some o' your 'air into it, Cris, an' I'll keep it in
my pocket so long's I'm alive.'

■y

306

UNDER THE DEODARS

Then Cris wept anew, and the interview ended. Pub-
lic feeling among the drummer-boys rose to fever pitch
and the lives of Jakin and Lew became unenviable.
Not only had they been permitted to enlist two years
before the regulation boy's age — fourteen — but, by
virtue, it seemed, of their extreme youth, they were
allowed to go to the Front — which thing had not hap-
pened to acting-drummers within the knowledge of
boy. The Band which was to accompany the Regi-
ment had been cut down to the regulation twenty men,
the surplus returning to the ranks. Jakin and Lew were
attached to the Band as supernumeraries, though they
would much have preferred being company buglers.

"Don't matter much,' said Jakin after the medical
inspection. 'Be thankful that we're 'lowed to go at
all. The Doctor 'e said that if we could stand what we
took from the Bazar-Sergeant's son we'd stand pretty
nigh anything.'

'Which we will/ said Lew, looking tenderly at the
ragged and ill-made housewife that Cris had given him,
with a lock of her hair worked into a sprawling " ' L '
upon the cover.

'It was the best I could,' she sobbed. 'I wouldn't
let mother nor the Sergeant's tailor 'elp me. Keep it
always, Piggy, an' remember I love you true.'

They marched to the railway station, nine hundred
and sixty strong, and every soul in cantonments turned
out to see them go. The drummers gnashed their teeth
at Jakin and Lew marching with the Band, the married
women wept upon the platform, and the Regiment
cheered its noble self black in the face.

'A nice level lot,' said the Colonel to the Second-in-
Command as they watched the first four companies en-
training.

ft

THE DRUMS OF THE FORE AND AFT 307

'Fit to do anything,' said the Second-in-Command
enthusiastically. 'But it seems to me they're a thought
too young and tender for the work in hand. It's bitter
cold up at the Front now.'

'They're sound enough,' said the Colonel. 'We must
take our chance of sick casualties.'

So they went northward, ever northward, past droves
and droves of camels, armies of camp-followers, and
legions of laden mules, the throng thickening day by
day, till with a shriek the train pulled up at a hopelessly
congested junction where six lines of temporary track
accommodated six forty-waggon trains; where whistles
blew, Babus sweated and Commissariat officers swore
from dawn till far into the night amid the wind-driven
chaff of the fodder-bales and the lowing of a thousand
steers.

'Hurry up — you're badly wanted at the Front,' was
the message that greeted the Fore and Aft, and the oc-
cupants of the Red Cross carriages told the same tale.

''Tisn't so much the bloomin' fightin',' gasped a
headbound trooper of Hussars to a knot of admiring
Fore and Afts. "Tisn't so much the bloomin' fightin',
though there's enough o' that. It's the bloomin' food
an' the bloomin' climate. Frost all night 'ccpt when it
hails, and biling sun all day, and the water stinks fit
to knock you down. I got my 'ead chipped like a egg;
I've got.pneumonia too, an' my guts is all out o' order.
'Tain't no bloomin' picnic in (hose parts, I can tell you.'

'Wot are the niggers like?' demanded a private.

'There's some prisoners in that train yonder. Go
an' look at 'em. They're the aristocracy o' the country.
The common folk are a dashed sight uglier. If you
want to know what they light with, reach under my
scat an' pull out the long knife that's there.'

3o8

UNDER THE DEODARS

They dragged out and beheld for the first time the
grim, bone-handled, triangular Afghan knife. It was
almost as long as Lew.

'That's the thing to jint ye,' said the trooper feebly.
'It can take off a man's arm at the shoulder as easy as
slicing butter. I halved the beggar that used that 'un,
but there's more of his likes up above. They don't
understand thrustin', but they're devils to slice.'

The men strolled across the tracks to inspect the
Afghan prisoners. They were unlike any 'niggers'
that the Fore and Aft had ever met — these huge, black-
haired, scowling sons of the Beni-Israel. As the men
stared the Afghans spat freely and muttered one to
another with lowered eyes.

'My eyes! Wot awful swine!' said Jakin, who was
in the rear of the procession. 'Say, old man, how you
got puckrowed, eh? Kiswasti you wasn't hanged for
your ugly face, hey?'

The tallest of the company turned, his leg-irons
clanking at the movement, and stared at the boy.
'See!' he cried to his fellows in Push to. 'They send
children against us. What a people, and what fools!'

'Hya!' said Jakin, nodding his head cheerily. 'You
go down-country. Khana get, peenikapanee get — live
like a bloomin' Raja ke marfik. That's a better ban-
dobust than baynit get it in your innards. Good-bye,
ole man. Take care o' your beautiful figure-'ed, an'
try to look ktishy.'

The men laughed and fell in for their first march
when they began to realize that a soldier's life was not
all beer and skittles. They were much impressed with
the size and bestial ferocity of the niggers whom they
had now learned to call 'Paythans,' and more with
the exceeding discomfort of their own surroundings.

THE DRUMS OF THE FORE AND AFT . 309

Twenty old soldiers in the corps would have taught
them how to make themselves moderately snug at night,
but they had no old soldiers, and, as the troops on the
line of march said, 'they lived like pigs.' They learned
the heart-breaking cussedness of camp-kitchens and
camels and the depravity of an E. P. tent and a wither-
wrung mule. They studied animalculae in water, and
developed a few cases of dysentery in their study.

At the end of their third march they were disagreea-
bly surprised by the arrival in their camp of a hammered
iron slug which, fired from a steady rest at seven hun-
dred yards, flicked out the brains of a private seated by
the fire. This robbed them of their peace for a night,
and was the beginning of a long-range fire carefully
calculated to that end. In the daytime they saw noth-
ing except an unpleasant puff of smoke from a Crag
above the line of march. At night there were distant
spurts of flame and occasional casualties, which set the
whole camp blazing into the gloom and, occasionally,
into opposite tents. Then they swore vehemently and
vowed that this was magnificent but not war.

Indeed it was not. The Regiment could not halt for
reprisals against the sharpshooters of the country-side.
Its duty was to go forward and make connection with
the Scotch and Gurkha troops with which it was bri-
gaded. The Afghans knew this, and knew too, after
their first tentative shots, that they were dealing with a
raw regiment. Thereafter they devoted themselves to
the task of keeping the Fore and Aft on the strain.
Not for any tiling would they have taken equal liberties
with a seasoned corps — with the wicked little Gurkhas,
whose delight it was to lie out in the open on a dark
night and stalk their stalkers — with the terrible, big
men dressed in women's clothes, who could be heard

UNDER THE DEODARS

praying to their God in the night-watches, and whose
peace of mind no amount of 'sniping' could shake —
or with those vile Sikhs, who marched so ostentatiously
unprepared and who dealt out such grim reward to those
who tried to profit by that unpreparedness. This white
regiment was different — quite different. It slept like
a hog, and, like a hog, charged in every direction when
it was roused. Its sentries walked with a footfall that
could be heard for a quarter of a mile; would fire at
anything that moved — even a driven donkey — and
when they had once fired, could be scientifically 'rushed'
and laid out a horror and an offence against the morn-
ing sun. Then there were camp-followers who strag-
gled and could be cut up without fear. Their shrieks
would disturb the white boys, and the loss of their ser-
vices would inconvenience them sorely.

Thus, at every march, the hidden enemy became
bolder and the regiment writhed and twisted under
attacks it could not avenge. The crowning triumph
was a sudden night-rush ending in the cutting of many
tent-ropes, the collapse of the sodden canvas and a
glorious knifing of the men who struggled and kicked
below. It was a great deed, neatly carried out, and it
shook the already shaken nerves of the Fore and Aft.
All the courage that they had been required to exercise
up to this point was the 'two o'clock in the morning
courage,' and, so far, they had only succeeded in shoot-
ing their comrades and losing their sleep.

Sullen, discontented, cold, savage, sick, with their uni-
forms dulled and unclean, the Fore and Aft joined theii
Brigade.

'I hear you had a tough time of it coming up,' said
the Brigadier. But when he saw the hospital-sheet?
hJo> face fell.

THE DRUMS OF THE FORE AND AFT 311

' This is bad,' said he to himself. ' They're as rotten as
sheep.' And aloud to the Colonel — 'I'm afraid we can't
spare you just yet. We want all we have, else I should
have given you ten days to recover in.'

The Colonel winced. ' On my honour, Sir,' he returned,
'there is not the least necessity to think of sparing us.
My men have been rather mauled and upset without a
fair return. They only want to go in somewhere where
they can see what's before them.'

'Can't say I think much of the Fore and Fit,' said the
Brigadier in confidence to his Brigade-Major. 'They've
lost all their soldiering, and, by the trim of them,
might have marched through the country from the
other side. A more fagged-out set of men I never put
eyes on.'

' Oh, they'll improve as the work goes on. The parade
gloss has been rubbed off a little, but they'll put on field
polish before long,' said the Brigade-Major. .'They've
been mauled, and they quite don't understand it.'

They did not. All the hitting was on one side, and it
was cruelly hard hitting with accessories that made them
sick. There was also the real sickness that laid hold of a
strong man and dragged him howling to the grave.
Worst of all, their officers knew just as little of the
country as the men themselves, and looked as if they did.
The Fore and Aft were in a thoroughly unsatisfactory
condition, but they believed that all would be well if they
could once get a fair go-in at the enemy. Pot-shots up
and down the valleys were unsatisfactory, and the bayo-
net never seemed to get a chance. Perhaps it was as well,
for a long-limbed Afghan with a knife had a reach of eight
feet, and could carry away lead that would disable three
Englishmen.

The Fore and Aft would like some rifle-practice at the

312

UNDER THE DEODARS

enemy — all seven hundred rifles blazing together. That
wish showed the mood of the men.

The Gurkhas walked into their camp, and in broken,
Barrack-room English strove to fraternise with them;
offered them pipes of tobacco and stood them treat at the
canteen. But the Fore and Aft, not knowing much of the
nature of the Gurkhas, treated them as they would treat
any other ' niggers,' and the little men in green trotted
back to their firm friends the Highlanders, and with many
grins confided to them : ' That dam white regiment no dam
use. Sulky — ugh! Dirty — ugh! Hya, any tot for
Johnny? ? Whereat the Highlanders smote the Gurkhas
as to the head, and told them not to vilify a British Regi-
ment, and the Gurkhas grinned cavernously, for the
Highlanders were their elder brothers and entitled to the
privileges of kinship. The common soldier who touches
a Gurkha is more than likely to have his head sliced
open.

Three days later the Brigadier arranged a battle ac-
cording to the rules of war and the peculiarity of the
Afghan temperament. The enemy were massing in in-
convenient strength among the hills, and the moving of
many green standards warned him that the tribes were
' up ' in aid of the Afghan regular troops. A Squadron and
a half of Bengal Lancers represented the available
Cavalry, and two screw-guns borrowed from a column
thirty miles away, the Artillery at the General's disposal.

' If they stand, as I've a very strong notion that they
will, I fancy we shall see an infantry fight that will be
worth watching,' said the Brigadier. ' We'll do it in style.
Each regiment shall be played into action by its Band,
and we'll hold the Cavalry in reserve.'

' For all the reserve? ' somebody asked.

'For all the reserve; because we're going to crumple

THE DRUMS OF THE FORE AND AFT 313

them up,' said the Brigadier, who was an extraordinary
Brigadier, and did not believe in the value of a reserve
when dealing with Asiatics. Indeed, when you come to
think of it, had the British Army consistently waited for
reserves in all its little affairs, the boundaries of Our
Empire would have stopped at Brighton beach.

That battle was to be a glorious battle.

The three regiments debouching from three separate
gorges, after duly crowning the heights above, were to
converge from the centre, left, and right upon what we
will call the Afghan army, then stationed towards the
lower extremity of a flat-bottomed valley. Thus it will be
seen that three sides of the valley practically belonged to
the English, while the fourth was strictly Afghan property.
In the event of defeat the Afghans had the rocky hills to
fly to, where the fire from the guerilla tribes in aid would
cover their retreat. In the event of victory these same
tribes would rush down and lend their weight to the rout
of the British.

The screw-guns were to shell the head of each Afghan
rush that was made in close formation, and the Cavalry,
held in reserve in the right valley, were to gently stimu-
late the break-up which would follow on the combined
attack. The Brigadier, sitting upon a rock overlooking
the valley, would watch the battle unrolled at his feet,
The Fore and Aft would debouch from the central gorge,
the GurKhas from the left, and the Highlanders from the
right, fof the reason that the left flank of the enemy
seemed as though it required the most hammering. It
was not every day that an Afghan force would take ground
in the open, and the Brigadier was resolved to make the
most of it.

'If we only had a few more men,' he said plaintively,
'we could surround the creatures and crumple 'em Up

3H

UNDER THE DEODARS

thoroughly. As it is, I'm afraid we can only cut them up
as they run. It's a great pity.'

The Fore and Aft had enjoyed unbroken peace for five
days, and were beginning, in spite of dysentery, to recover
their nerve. But they were not happy, for they did
not know the work in hand, and had they known, would
not have known how to do it. Throughout those five
days in which old soldiers might have taught them the
craft of the game, they discussed together their misad-
ventures in the past — how such an one was alive at dawn
and dead ere the dusk, and with what shrieks and
struggles such another had given up his soul under the
Afghan knife. Death was a new and horrible thing to the
30ns of mechanics who were used to die decently of
zymotic disease; and their careful conservation in bar-
racks had done nothing to make them look upon it with
less dread.

Very early in the dawn the bugles began to blow, and
the Fore and Aft, filled with a misguided enthusiasm,
turned out without waiting for a cup of coffee and a
biscuit; and were rewarded by being kept under arms in
the cold while the other regiments leisurely prepared for
the fray. All the world knows that it is ill taking the
breeks off a Highlander. It is much iller to try to make
him stir unless he is convinced of the necessity for haste.

The Fore and Aft waited, leaning upon their rifles and
listening to the protests of their empty stomachs. The
Colonel did his best to remedy the default of fining as
soon as it was borne in upon him that the affair would not
begin at once, and so well did he succeed that the coffee
was just ready when — the men moved off, their Band
leading. Even then there had been a mistake in time, and
the Fore and Aft came out into the valley ten minutes be-
fore the proper hour. Their Band wheeled to the right

THE DRUMS OF THE FORE AND AFT

3*5

after reaching the open, and retired behind a little rocky
knoll still playing while the Regiment went past.

It was not a pleasant sight that opened on the unin-
stnicted view, for the lower end of the valley appeared to
be rilled by an army in position — real and actual regi-
ments attired in red coats, and — of this there was no
doubt — firing Martini-Henri bullets which cut up the
ground a hundred yards in front of the leading company.
Over that pock-marked ground the Regiment had to pass,
and it opened the ball with a general and profound
courtesy to the piping pickets ; ducking in perfect time, as
though it had been brazed on a rod. Being half-capable
of thinking for itself, it fired a volley by the simple process
of pitching its rifle into its shoulder and pulling the trigger.
The bullets may have accounted for some of the watchers
on the hillside, but they certainly did not affect the mass
of enemy in front,while the noise of the rifles drowned any
orders that might have been given.

'Good God!' said the Brigadier, sitting on the rock
high above all. ' That regiment has spoilt the whole show.
Hurry up the others, and let the screw-guns get off. '

But the screw-guns, in working round the heights, had
stumbled upon a wasp's nest of a small mud fort which
they incontinently shelled at eight hundred yards, to the
huge discomfort of the occupants, who were unaccus-
tomed to weapons of such devilish precision.

The Fore and Aft continued to go forward but with
shortened stride. Where were the Other regiments, and
why did these niggers use Martinis? They took open
order instinctively, lying down and firing at random,
rushing a few paces forward and lying down again, ac-
cording to the regulations. Once in this formation, each
man felt himself desperately alone, and edged in towards
his fellow for comfort's sake.

$i6 UNDER THE DEODARS

Then the crack of his neighbour's rifle at his ear led him
to fire as rapidly as he could — again for the sake of the
comfort of the noise. The reward was not long delayed.
Five volleys plunged the files in banked smoke impene-
trable to the eye, and the bullets began to take ground
twenty or thirty yards in front of the firers, as the
weight of the bayonet dragged down and to the right
*?rms wearied with holding the kick of the leaping Martini.
The Company Commanders peered helplessly through the
smoke, the more nervous mechanically trying to fan it
away with their helmets.

'High and to the left!' bawled a Captain till he was
hoarse. ' No good ! Cease firing, and let it drift away a
bit.'

Three and four times the bugles shrieked the order, and
when it was obeyed the Fore and Aft looked that their foe
should be lying before them in mown swaths of men. A
light wind drove the smoke to leeward, and showed the
enemy still in position and apparently unaffected. A
quarter of a ton of lead had been buried a furlong in front
of them, as the ragged earth attested.

That was not demoralising to the Afghans, who have
not European nerves. They were waiting for the mad
riot to die down, and were firing quietly into the heart of
the smoke. A private of the Fore and Aft spun up his
company shrieking with agony, another was kicking the
earth and gasping, and a third, ripped through the lower
intestines by a jagged bullet, was calling aloud on his com-
rades to put him out of his pain. These were the casual-
ties, and they were not soothing to hear or see. The
smoke cleared to a dull haze.

Then the foe began to shout with a great shouting and
a mass — a black mass — detached itself from the main
body, and rolled over the ground at horrid speed. It was

THE DRUMS OF THE FORE AND AFT 317

composed of, perhaps, three hundred men,' who would
shout and fire and slash if the rush of their fifty comrades
who were determined to die carried home. The fifty were
Ghazis, half-maddened with drugs and wholly mad with
religious fanaticism. When they rushed the British fire
ceased, and in the lull the order was given to close ranks
and meet them with the bayonet.

Any one who knew the business could have told the
Fore and Aft that the only way of dealing with a Ghazi
rush is by volleys at long ranges; because a man who means
to die, who desires to die, who will gain heaven by dying,
must, in nine cases out of ten, kill a man who has a linger-
ing prejudice in favour of life. Where they should have
closed and gone forward, the Fore and Aft opened out and
skirmished, and where they should have opened out and
fired, they closed and waited.

A man dragged from his blankets half awake and unfed
is never in a pleasant frame of mind. Nor does his
happiness increase when he watches the whites of the eyes
of three hundred six-foot fiends upon whose beards the
foam is lying, upon whose tongues is a roar of wrath > and
whose hands are yard-long knives.

The Fore and Aft heard the Gurkha bugles bringing
that regiment forward at the double, while the neighing
of the Highland pipes came from the left. They strove to
stay where they were, though the bayonets wavered down
the lino- like the oars of a ragged boat. Then they felt
body to-body the amazing physical strength of their foes;
a shriek of pain ended the rush, and the knives fell amid
scenes not to be told. The men clubbed together and
smote blindly — as often as not at their own fellows.
Their front crumpled like paper, and the fifty Ghazis
passed on; their backers, now drunk with success, lighting
as madly as they.

UNDER THE DEODARS

Then the rear-ranks were bidden to close up, and the
subalterns dashed into the stew — alone. For the rear-
ranks had heard the clamour in front, the yells and the
howls of pain, and had seen the dark stale blood that
makes afraid. They were not going to stay. It was the
rushing of the camps over again. Let their officers go to
Hell, if they chose; they would get away from the knives.

'Come on!' shrieked the subalterns, and their men,
cursing them, drew back, each closing into his neighbour
and wheeling round.

Charteris and Devlin, subalterns of the last company,
faced their death alone in the belief that their men would
follow.

'You've killed me, you cowards/ sobbed Devlin and
dropped, cut from the shoulder-strap to the centre of the
chest, and a fresh detachment of his men retreating,
always retreating, trampled him under foot as they made
>;or the pass whence they had emerged.

I kissed her in the kitchen, and I kjssed her in the hall.

Child'um, child'um, follow me!
Oh Golly, said the cook, is he gwine to kiss us all?

Halla— Halla— Halla— Hallelujah !

The Gurkhas were pouring through the left gorge and
over the heights at the double to the invitation of their
Regimental Quick-step. The black rocks were crowned
with dark green spiders as the bugles gave tongue
jubilantly : —

In the morning! In the morning by the bright light!
When Gabriel blows his trumpet in the morning!

The Gurkha rear-companies tripped and blundered
over loose stones. The front-files halted for a moment to

THE DRUMS OF THE FORE AND AFT

take stock of the valley and to settle stray boot-laces.
Then a happy little sigh of contentment soughed down
the ranks, and it was as though the land smiled, for be-
hold there below was the enemy, and it was to meet them
that the Gurkhas had doubled so hastily. There was
much enemy. There would be amusement. The little
men hitched their kukris well to hand, and gaped ex-
pectantly at their officers as terriers grin ere the stone is
cast for them to fetch. The Gurkhas' ground sloped
downward to the valley, and they enjoyed a fair vaew of
the proceedings. They sat upon the bowlders to watch,
for their officers were not going to waste their wind in as-
sisting to repulse a Ghazi rush more than half a mile away.
Let the white men look to their own front.

'Hi! yi!' said the Subadar-Major, who was sweating
profusely. 'Dam fools yonder, stand close-order! This
is no time for close order, it is the time for volleys.
Ugh!'

Horrified, amused, and indignant, the Gurkhas beheld
the retirement of the Fore and Aft with a running chorus
of oaths and commentaries.

( 'They run! The white men run! Colonel Sahib, may
we also do a little running?' murmured Runbir Thappa,
the Senior Jemadar.

But the Colonel would have none of it. k Let the beggars
be cut up a little,' said he wratht'ullv. 1 'Serves 'em right.
They'll be prodded into lacing round in a minute. 1 He
looked through his field-glasses, and caught the glint of an
officer's sword.

'Beating 'em with the flat damned conscripts! How
the Ghazis are walking into them ! ' said he.

The Fore and Aft, heading back, bore with them their
officers. The narrowness ol* the pass forced the mob into
*ol«d formation, and the rear ranks delivered some sort oi

UNDER THE DEODARS

a wavering volley. The Ghazis drew off, for they did not
know what reserve the gorge might hide. Moreover, it
was never wise to chase white men too far. They re-
turned as wolves return to cover, satisfied with the
slaughter that they had done, and only stopping to slash
at the wounded on the ground. A quarter of a mile had
the Fore and Aft retreated, and now, jammed in the pass,
was quivering with pain, shaken and demoralised with
fear, while the officers, maddened beyond control, smote
the men with the hilts and the flats of their swords.

'Get back! Get back, you cowards — you women!
Right about face — column of companies, form — you
hounds!' shouted the Colonel, and the subalterns swore
aloud. But the Regiment wanted to go — to go anywhere
out of the range of those merciless knives. It swayed to
and fro irresolutely with shouts and outcries, while from
the right the Gurkhas dropped volley after volley ol
cripple-stopper Snider bullets at long range into the mob
of the Ghazis returning to their own troops.

The Fore and Aft Band, though protected from direct
fire by the rocky knoll under which it had sat down, fled
at the first rush. Jakin and Lew would have fled also, but
their short legs left them fifty yards in the rear, and by
the time the Band had mixed with the Regiment, they
were painfully aware that they would have to close in
alone and unsupported.

' Get back to that rock,' gasped Jakin. ' They won't see
us there.'

And they returned to the scattered instruments of the
Band; their hearts nearly bursting their ribs.

'Here's a nice show for us,' said Jakin, throwing him
self full length on the ground. 'A bloomin' fine show for
British Infantry! Oh, the devils! They've gone an' left
us alone here ! Wot'll we do? '

THE DRUMS OF THE FORE AND AFT

321

Lew took possession of a cast-off water bottle, which
naturally was full of canteen rum, and drank till he
coughed again.

'Drink,' said he shortly. 'They'll come back in a
minute or two — you see.'

Jakin drank, but there was no sign of the Regiment's
return. They could hear a dull clamour from the head
of the valley of retreat, and saw the Ghazis slink
back, quickening their pace as the Gurkhas fired at
them.

'We're all that's left of the Band, an' we'll be cut up as
sure as death,' said Jakin.

'I'll die game, then,' said Lew thickly, fumbling with
his tiny drummer's sword. The drink was working on his
brain as it was on Jakin's.

' 'Old on! I know something better than fightin',' said
Jakin, stung by the splendour of a sudden thought due
chiefly to rum. 'Tip our bloomin' cowards yonder the
word to come back. The Paythan beggars are well away.
Come on, Lew! We won't get hurt. Take the fife an'
give me the drum. The Old Step for all your bloomin'
guts are worth! There's a few of our men coming back
now. Stand up, ye drunken little defaulter. By your
right— quick march!'

He slipped the drum-sling over his shoulder, thrust the
fife into Lew's hand, and the two boys marched out of the
cover of the rock into the open, making a hideous hash of
the first.bars of the ' British Grenadiers.'

As Lew had said, a few of the Fore and Aft were coming
back sullenly and shamefacedly under the stimulus of
blows and abuse; their red coats shone at the head of the
valley, and behind them were wavering bayonets. Hut
between this shattered line and the enemy, who with
Afghan suspicion feared that the hasty retreat meant, an

■

322

UNDER THb uEODARS

ambush, and had not moved therefore, lay half a mile of
a level ground dotted only by the wounded.

The tune settled into full swing and the boys kept
shoulder to shoulder, Jakin banging the drum as one pos-
sessed. The one fife made a thin and pitiful squeaking,
but the tune carried far, even to the Gurkhas.

' Come on, you dogs! ' muttered Jakin to himself. 'Are
we to play forhever? ' Lew was staring straight in front of
him and marching more stiffly than ever he had done on
parade.

And in bitter mockery of the distant mob, the old tune
of the Old Line shrilled and rattled:—

Some talk of Alexander,

And some of Hercules;
Of Hector and Lysander,

And such great names as these!

There was a far-off clapping of hands from the* Gurkhas,
and a roar from the Highlanders in the distance, but
never a shot was fired by British or Afghan. The two
little red dots moved forward in the open parallel to the
enemy's front.

But of all the world's great heroes

There's none that can compare,
With a tow-row-row-row-row-row,

To the British Grenadier!

The men of the Fore and Aft were gathering thick at
the entrance into the plain. The Brigadier on the heights
far above was speechless with rage. Still no movement
from the enemy. The day stayed to watch the children.

Jakin halted and beat the long roll of the Assembly 5
while the fife squealed despairingly.

THE DRUMS OF THE FORE AND AFT 323

'Right about face! Hold up, Lew, you're drunk,' said
Jakin. They wheeled and marched back : —

Those heroes of antiquity-
Ne'er saw a cannon-ball,
Nor knew the force o' powder,

• ' Here they come ! ' said Jakin. ' Go on, Lew ' : —

To scare their foes withal !

The Fore and Aft were pouring out of the valley. What
officers had said to men in that time of shame and humili-
ation will never be known; for neither officers nor men
speak of it now.

'They are coming anew!' shouted a priest among the
Afghans. 'Do not kill the boys! Take them alive, and
they shall be of our faith.'

But the first volley had been fired, and Lew dropped on
his face. Jakin stood for a minute, spun round and col-
lapsed, as the Fore and Aft came forward, the curses of
their officers in their ears, and in their hearts the shame of
open shame.

Half the men had seen the drummers die, and they
made no sign. They did not even shout. They doubled
out straight across the plain in open order, and they did
not fn

'This,' said the Colonel of Gurkhas, softly, 'is the real
attack, as it should have been delivered. Come on, my
children.'

' Ulu-lu-lu-lu !' squealed the Gurkhas, and came down
with a joyful clicking of ku kris -those vicious Gurkha
knives.

On the right there was no rush. The Highlanders,
cannily commending their souls to God (for it matters as

324

UNDER THE DEODARS

much to a dead man whether he has been shot in a Border
scuffle or at Waterloo) , opened out and fired according to
their custom, that is to say without heat and without
intervals, while the screw-guns, having disposed of the
impertinent mud fort aforementioned, dropped shell after
shell into the clusters round the flickering green standards
on the heights.

' Charrging is an unfortunate necessity,' murmured the
Colour-Sergeant of the right company of the Highlanders.
' It makes the men sweer so, but I am thinkin' that it will
come to a charrge if these black devils stand much longer.
Stewarrt, man, you're firing into the eye of the sun, and
he'll not take any harm for Government ammuneetion.
A foot lower and a great deal slower ! What are the Eng-
lish doing? They're very quiet there in the centre. Run-
ning again? '

The English were not running. They were hacking and
hewing and stabbing, for though one white man is seldom
physically a match for an Afghan in a sheepskin or
wadded coat, yet, through the pressure of many white
men behind, and a certain thirst for revenge in his heart,
he becomes capable of doing much with both ends of his
rifle. The Fore and Aft held their fire till one bullet could
drive through five or six men, and the front of the Afghan
force gave on the volley. They then selected their men,
and slew them with deep gasps and short hacking coughs,
and groanings of leather belts against strained bodies, and
realised for the first time that an Afghan attacked is far
less formidable than an Afghan attacking; which fact old
soldiers might have told them.

But they had no old soldiers in their ranks.

The Gurkhas' stall at the bazar was the noisiest, for the
men were engaged — to a nasty noise as of beef being cut
on the block — with the kukri, which they preferred to the

THE DRUMS OF THE FORE AND AFT 325

bayonet; well knowing how the Afghan hates the half-
moon blade.

As the Afghans wavered, the green standards on the
mountain moved down to assist them in a last rally. This
was unwise. The Lancers chafing in the right gorge had
thrice despatched their only subaltern as galloper to re-
port on the progress of affairs. On the third occasion he
returned, with a bullet-graze on his knee, swearing strange
oaths in Hindustani, and saying that all things were
ready. So that Squadron swung round the right of the
Highlanders with a wicked whistling of wind in the pen-
nons of its lances, and fell upon the remnant just when,
according to all the rules of war, it should have waited
for the foe to show more signs of wavering.

But it was a dainty charge, deftly delivered, and it
ended by the Cavalry finding itself at the head of the pass
by which the Afghans intended to retreat ; and down the
track that the lances had made streamed two companies
of the Highlanders, which was never intended by the
Brigadier. The new development was successful. It de-
tached the enemy from his base as a sponge is torn from a
rock, and left him ringed about with fire in that pitiless
plain. And as a sponge is chased round the bath-tub by
the hand of the bather, so were the Afghans chased till
they broke into little detachments much more difficult to
dispose of than large masses.

'See!' quoth the Brigadier. 'Everything has come as I
arranged. We've cut their base, and now we'll bucket 'em
to pieces.'

A direct hammering was all that the Brigadier had
dared to hope for, considering the size of the force at his
disposal; but men who stand or fall by the errors of their
opponents may be forgiven for turning Chance Into
Design. The bucketing went forward merrily. The

■1

UNDER THE DEODARS

Afghan forces were upon the run — the run of wearied
wolves who snarl and bite over their shoulders. The red
lances dipped by twos and threes, and, with a shriek, up-
rose the lance-butt, like a spar on a stormy sea, as the
trooper cantering forward cleared his point. The Lancers
kept between their prey and the steep hills, for all who
could were trying to escape from the valley of death. The
Highlanders gave the fugitives two hundred yards' law,
and then brought them down, gasping and choking ere
they could reach the protection of the bowlders above.
The Gurkhas followed suit; but the Fore and Aft were
killing on their own account, for they had penned a mass
of men between their bayonets and a wall of rock, and
the flash of the rifles was lighting the wadded coats.

4 We cannot hold them, Captain Sahib!' panted a Res-
saidar of Lancers. 'Let us try the carbine. The lance is
good, but it wastes time.'

They tried the carbine, and still the enemy melted away
—fled up the hills by hundreds when there were only
twenty bullets to stop them. On the heights the screw-
guns ceased firing — they had run out of ammunition — and
the Brigadier groaned, for the musketry fire could not
sufficiently smash the retreat. Long before the last vol-
leys were fired, the doolies were out in force looking for
the wounded. The battle was over, and, but for want of
fresh troops, the Afghans would have been wiped off the
earth. As it was they counted their dead by hundreds,
and nowhere were the dead thicker than in the track of
the Fore and Aft.

But the Regiment did not cheer with the Highlanders,
nor did they dance uncouth dances with the Gurkhas
among the dead. They looked under their brows at the
Colonel as they leaned upon their rifles and panted.

' Get back to camp, you. Haven't vou disgraced your-

THE DRUMS OF THE FORE AND AFT

327

self enough for one day! Go and look to the wounded.
It's all you're fit for/ said the Colonel. Yet for the past
hour the Fore and Aft had been doing all that mortal com-
mander could expect. They had lost heavily because they
did not know how to set about their business with proper
skill, but they had borne themselves gallantly, and this
was their reward.

A young and sprightly Colour-Sergeant, who had begun
to imagine himself a hero, offered his water bottle to a
Highlander, whose tongue was black with thirst. ' I drink
with no cowards,' answered the youngster huskily, and,
turning to a Gurkha, said, 'Hya, Johnny! Drink water
got it? ' The Gurkha grinned and passed his bottle. Tht
Fore and Aft said no word.

They went back to camp when the field of strife had
been a little mopped up and made presentable, and the
Brigadier, who saw himself a Knight in three months, was
the only soul who was complimentary to them. The
Colonel was heart-broken, and the officers were savage
and sullen.

'Well,' said the Brigadier, 'they are young troops of
course, and it was not unnatural that they should retire in
disorder for a bit.'

'Oh, my only Aunt Maria!' murmured a junior Staff
Officer. ' Retire in disorder ! It was a bally run ! '

'But they came again as we all know,' cooed the Brig
adier, the Colonel's ashy-white face before him, ' and they
braved as well as could possibly be expected. Behaved
beautifully, indeed. I was watching them. It's not a
matter to take to heart, Colonel. As some German
General said of his men, they wanted to be shootcd over a
little, that was all.' To himself he said 'Now they're

blooded I can give 'em responsible work. It's as well that
they got what they did. 'Teach 'cm more than half a

328

UNDER THE DEODARS

dozen rifle flirtations, that will — later — run alone and
bite. Poor old Colonel, though.'

All that afternoon the heliograph winked and flickered
on the hills, striving to tell the good news to a mountain
forty miles away. And in the evening there arrived,
dusty, sweating, and sore, a misguided Correspondent,
who had gone out to assist at a trumpery village-burning,
and who had read off the message from afar, cursing hig
luck the while.

'Let's have the details somehow — as full as ever you
can, please. It's the first time I've ever been left this cam-
paign,' said the Correspondent to the Brigadier, and the
Brigadier, nothing loth, told him how an Army of Com-
munication had been crumpled up, destroyed, and all but
annihilated by the craft, strategy, wisdom, and foresight
of the Brigadier.

But some say, and among these be the Gurkhas who
watched on the hillside, that that battle was won by Jakin
and Lew, whose little bodies were borne up just in time to
fit two gaps at the head of the big ditch-grave for the dead
under the heights of Jagai.

THE END

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
GARDEN CITY, N. Y.